


Bulldog

by natsora



Series: Elements of Ryder [8]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, First Aid, Gang Violence, Gen, Nudity, Origin Story, Smut, Street Fights, Tattoo, Teacher-Student Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:00:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28590669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natsora/pseuds/natsora
Summary: Harry Carlyle, a man, a doctor, an enigma. He joins the Andromeda Initiative as a doctor. He travels 600 years from the Milky Way. But who is he really?Find out who he is before the man you see now. Trace his story to his earliest days and find out what makes him the person he is now.
Relationships: Harry Carlyle/Female Ryder | Sara
Series: Elements of Ryder [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1040183
Comments: 16
Kudos: 10





	1. Utsaah

**Author's Note:**

> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. Cover art as always by the awesome [Seo Kanori](https://www.seokanori.com). 
> 
> Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/). She just updated [her fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593991/chapters/68324881)

Ryder stepped off the shuttle and grimaced at the sight of the mess of people milling about the docks. Everything looked familiar but yet ever so slightly off. The horde of people remained the same. Some of them mindlessly enjoying the fruits of the Pathfinders' labours, others hurrying from task to task trying to keep the pieces of the Nexus glued together. She shook her head, reminding herself she was no longer the Pathfinder — _a_ Pathfinder. All of this was, technically, no longer her problem. 

Ryder sighed and stifled the urge to touch her left ear. The seam where the cloned helix ended and where her original ear started was flawless, she had checked it many times in the mirror. Sure the skin tone differed, the cloned bit fairer then her original, but it was perfect as far as she was concerned, although she could still feel it burning sometimes — especially now. Exhaling, she shoved the memories away. Coming back was always going to be hard, she never expected it to be _this_ hard. There better be some ryncol in her future soon.

Gleaming polished floors unfurled like a carpet, bright and white structures soared up as far as she could see. A couple of food carts dotted the ship berths, catering to passengers looking for a hot meal and a cool drink. The better cafes and restaurants weren’t there, those were located at Omni ward, better known as Central. She rolled her eyes. Of course Tann sold the rights to name the biggest area of commerce to the highest bidder. Who had more credits than Omni-corp?

The Leadership and the various governmental offices remained holed up in the renamed Garson Operations Centre. What was honour for a dead woman when nobody bothered to even investigate her murder? It felt like nothing but the slap in Garson's cold dead face. If the Leadership thought this gave them more legitimacy over everyone they'd have to think twice because it wasn’t fooling anyone — well not her anyway.

The parts of the Nexus that had been shut down before Uprising had all finally been reopened and filled up. The latest and final one was Macen ward of the Residential Quarters. Five thousand residential units for individuals and families. They had been assigned to the last of the sleepers. The Nexus was finally running the way it was supposed to. A clear energy buzzed in the air. People were happy, busy and fulfilled. Maybe it hadn't been all bad. 

Ryder shook her head, lining up so that she could pick up her luggage. These people didn't know what she knew, what the Leadership. The rumoured kett temple remained elusive, trouble with the Roekaar still brewed, tensions with Kadara continued to be high, and there was a distinct lack of golden worlds. This place should reek of anxiety, of apprehension, of fear. She sighed. What she’d give to be so blissfully ignorant. No, she wouldn’t burst their bubble, that would be… cruel. _Let them enjoy this fragile certainty for a little while longer._

Straightening her spine, Ryder hefted her overnight bag that held her armour over her shoulder and picked up a long case from the belt. The case, battered, scratched and dinged up, had been to hell and back. More importantly what its content had seen from the Milky Way to Andromeda. It had never been far from her side since she joined the Alliance and had been what she used most of her assigned storage for. After Scott — her steps faltered — after the incident, this was all that was left to tie her to the life she had before. 

It had been a long time since Ryder stepped onto the Nexus — months, fuck almost a whole year in a month or so. This was just a visit, she told herself, one she didn't intend to repeat frequently. She was a fucking soldier, she could deal with a little visit to the Nexus. With a shuddering breath, she forced herself onwards, she had work to fucking do.

Her bag bumped against her back as she pushed her way through the sea of people towards immigration. No more Pathfinder clearance or access to the high security docks. Oh well, win some, lose some. Though she wasn’t the Pathfinder any longer, combat and soldiering was in her blood. And she was damned good at it. She wouldn't run from it. Turns out, as much as she hated her parents, the bad apple never did fall far — she was Alec fucking Ryder's daughter through and through. Returning to the field with APEX and the Resistance felt different, but welcomed at the same time. It beat hunting wild adhi all day long with the Nakmors.

Ryder stopped at the counter and waited for the scans to sweep over her. Her name and ID popped up on the terminal. She could feel the officers’ eyes on her, making her skin crawled. The officer cleared his throat and looked rather uncomfortable. “Umm, Path—” He coughed and tried again. “The rifle, do you have a—”

There was an odd sense of pride and yet heaviness in her chest knowing her name still carried a reputation. The question was what kind of reputation was it? Shoving the thought out of her mind, she decided to be merciful on the officer. She stabbed a finger at her omni-tool and sent the permit for her rifle over. Besides, Kandros had taken care of the permit, no sense in wasting his efforts. 

This was going to be her first in person report since picking up assignments from him. The officer waved her through with relief. She shifted her bag into a more comfortable position. Her shoulders and neck ached, many other parts in varying degrees of soreness, she craved for a hot shower. Three days in the field doing recon work would do that to anyone. She rolled her shoulders and headed straight for the trams. First stop, Garson Operations Centre, then she’d need to give Nyx a call. She was supposed to meet her to pick up a delivery. 

* * *

Two hours later, Ryder keyed herself into Carlyle’s assigned quarters. Most people would have assumed they were lovers — they weren’t wrong, but they were quite the kind they’d assumed. They had sex, but beyond that Carlyle held her trust and that was more important, more valuable that any kind of access fucking her. 

The meeting with Kandros went as well as could be expected. She delivered her report in her usual terse and concise manner, but he ended up briefing her on three new assignments. Kandros was now in complete charge of APEX. It no longer was the human Pathfinder’s job to assign the missions. That had been her one and only condition when she started working for Kandros. Somehow between him and de Tershaav, they had been keeping her really busy, so it all worked out she figured.

Ryder had swung by Nyx’s offices at Vandre ward after that, yet another corporate sponsored naming opportunity. Nyx had done well since resigning from the Pathfinder’s crew. She always was an opportunitist anyway, Nyx Services was fast turning into the company people go to for difficult to acquire items. Her crate of ryncol had been worth the trip to the Nexus. 

Her fingers twitched as Ryder stared at the room — too neat, too tidy, too everything in its place. If it wasn’t for the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, she couldn’t tell someone was living in the space. The entire place looked sterile. The dark cloud hanging around her head was dissipating already. With a grin, she dropped her bag right at the doorway, so close it forced her to step over them to get into the apartment properly. Her Black Widow case went next with a thump. She inhaled. Already the room looked so much more lived in. The crate of ryncol, unlike her other belongings, was carefully carried and placed on the nearest available table space. She might have nudged a couple of datapads off the table just to make space for it. A small price to pay for precious, precious ryncol.

Ryder stretched, groaning a little as her spine popped. Time for a shower. Unzipping her hoodie and shrugging it off, she casually dropped it on the floor. A trail of clothes littered in her wake as she sauntered to the bathroom. By the time she reached it, she was nude. A large mirror dominated the wall. Averting her eyes, she made her way quickly to the stall. Her ear flared hot for one second and faded. She didn’t need to look at her scars today. Blood coursing through her veins, her heart throbbed against her chest. She was _still_ alive. 

Turning the water as hot as it would go, Ryder closed her eyes and stepped under the spray of water. She held her breath and counted. When all her attention narrowed down to the breath she was holding, to the count she kept in her head, she didn’t allow her thoughts to wander. Learning this had taken months and months of practise and butting heads with Jenaki, her krogan “therapist”. After days and weeks and months of banging her head against the wall, something eventually clicked. And the technique worked. Some days this worked easier than others, but with perseverance this always when worked in a pinch. 

By two hundred, Ryder let her breath out explosively. Her head might be throbbing harder than before, but her mind had cleared. She set about getting herself clean. Soap and shampoo applied liberally as she scrubbed. When she stepped out, she felt like a human being again. Pulling on a simple black tank top and a pair of jeans, she stepped out of the apartment again. She had an appointment to keep with her doctor after all. 

* * *

Vandre ward stretched out before Ryder’s eyes. Restaurants and shop kiosks lined the broad walks. People wearing the colour coded Initiative uniforms strode down the broad walk, hurrying from one appointment to the next. She stopped at the Medical Centre. Twenty stories tall, accommodating not just the sick and the injured but this was also the heart of key research done in Andromeda — CIND, among others. She shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and counted. One Cutter was enough for a lifetime. This work was important. 

Carlyle had been trying to finalise his move to Tak’kak, the Initiative outpost on Elaaden, but Addison had been blocking his attempts. Sure, he was one of the few doctors who had worked on the Pathfinder’s SAM implants. That made him a valuable asset, but he could work just fine on Tak’kak just as he did on the Nexus. Ryder would prefer to have him on Tak’kak than so far away. She couldn’t say when her thoughts shifted, maybe it was after Teo’s birth, maybe seeing him grow up and knowing Carlyle was missing all the moments she got to have made her change her mind. Regardless, Carlyle should be able to decide where he wanted to live and that was that. 

With a strange new disease spreading across some of Angaran outposts, Carlyle had been tasked to lead the research team in figuring it out if it would be a problem for the rest of them. The Initiative’s outposts weren’t affected _yet_ , but with the way things went, it would only be a matter of time. 

Carlyle had shown her the reports he had been getting. Delirium, fever, dehydration and seizures. If fever management wasn’t done properly, death. Some of the infected recovered, others suffered recurring fever that stretched on for days and weeks at a time. If these weren’t worrying enough, family members of the infected reported they suffered personality changes after recovery, almost as if the fever had permanently altered something in their brains. 

Tak’kak had seen its first case of Khaltark, roughly translating to brain fever in krogan, when an angara ice hauler docked. Ryder agreed with the name. She had been present to subdue the angara when the others were milling around, thinking the angara had been drunk. She recognised the signs, in fact, she believed it looked remarkably like the virus she had encountered in Voeld. If she had been a religious person, she would be praying that she wasn’t right.

Shoving the thought aside, Ryder came to a stop outside the Medical Centre. There was a small — tiny, really, maybe more like microscopic, group of five chanting and holding digital placards in their hands. They faced the Medical Centre, clearly protesting about _something_. She rounded over to the other side just to get a look. 

> Harry Carlyle Fraudster

Though her curiosity was piqued by the terribly sad five man protest, she did take offence to their claim that Carlyle was a fraud. One of them did a double take. Oh shit, Ryder recognised that look anywhere. That man had put a name to a face, more specifically her old job to her fucking face. But… maybe she could figure out what the fuck was going on. Carlyle hadn’t mentioned any of this in the calls they have had for the past few months. 

“Pathfinder!” the man called out. 

Dressed in clothes more typically suited to Kadara’s dust storms, he reached out to grab her arm. Instead of ignoring him and making her way into the Medical Centre, or dancing out of the way, Ryder stood her ground and glared. Their eyes met. The man faltered, his hand hovered in the air for a split second then he dropped it awkwardly by his side.

“I am not the Pathfinder.” Her voice was flat and curt, her gaze stone hard. 

He scratched the back of his neck. “Right, I forgot. I’m sorry, but I believe you still have some pull with the Director. You have to get him to fire Harry Carlyle.”

Ryder frowned, and the man took another step back. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she smirked, knowing Harper probably died a little if she knew Ryder was still regarded as the human Pathfinder to some. 

“Carlyle is the wrong person to lead any research group, let alone being a doctor. He looks down on anyone who doesn’t matter. We’re not the elites living on the Nexus or Meridian, he wouldn’t care about any of us.”

Ryder hummed, a noncommittal sound. She studied him. With lines creasing the corners of his eyes, he looked older than Carlyle. He had the look of an Outcast, lean and wiry, hardened by the less than ideal circumstances of Kadara. But why would he, and by extension the rest of the sad little crew here, have a vendetta against Carlyle? She couldn’t imagine how they’d even brush shoulders, let alone allowing him to have a strong enough opinion about Carlyle. She glanced over his shoulder at his four other friends. 

The man took Ryder’s silence as permission to carry on. Noticing her attention was cast elsewhere, he explained, “We’re all Outcasts. Once I’ve heard about Carlyle had been named the lead researcher into that fucking Brain Fever business, I have to come. Sending mails to the director got me nowhere.”

Ryder could have told him that, but she kept her lips pressed thin. 

“So we're protesting this decision. Harry Carlyle is a terrible, cruel man with no regard for how he betrays and stomps on people he didn't have a use for.”

Mild annoyance slowly gave way to irritation and then to anger. Nothing the man said made sense. She had known Carlyle for years. Carlyle could be cold, rude, perfunctory and all kinds of infuriating things, but cruel he was not. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she demanded. 

* * *

**Year 2161**

Harry sat with his elbows braced against his bare thighs. Dust motes danced in the morning air as the lingering heat from his bed sloughed off his back. Gazing out of his window, skycars were zipping by silently, throwing up plums of condensed air behind them. A tram hummed as they flashed by on its rails underneath his window. He stood and walked to the window. So what if he was naked, he was young and he looked fucking good. Tamayo Point and its citizens should be glad he was sharing his body with them. 

Pressing his forehead against the window, he savoured the cold searing his skin. The quiet soothed the noise in his head, calming it. A soft groan startled the still air. He frowned, a spike of annoyance rammed into his skull. Glancing over his shoulder, he glared at the sleeping girl in his bed. 

What was her name? May? June? Or was she named after some other fucking month of the stupid Earth calendar they were still sticking to here? It didn’t matter. She laid sprawled across his bed, sheets and their uniforms twisted up around her like a snake. Just another one of the notches on his belt, like the last one and the one before that and going back as long as he had been here. This was just something to do, to pass the time here at Brillantmont Intergalactic College — his prison, his playground. 

Harry tapped on his omni-tool, the orange glow seared his retinas. It took a couple of blinks for his eyes to adjust. He didn’t really need to read the message, he had it memorised already. The motion rote, like a ritual, as he prepared himself for what he knew by hard. 

> Harry, your mother passed away last month. She has already been cremated and interred at the family plot in London. 

This came Harry had learnt about it when one of his teachers asked him how he was doing. He swiped and brought up the news article that prompted his teacher to seek him out. 

> Elizabeth Carlyle-Patel, human diplomat to the Asari Republics found dead in her office. 

Harry took a deep breath and exhaled. Fury had given way to something else by now, something deeper, darker and harder. The Citadel news hadn’t bothered with a follow up article. He had no news, no information — nothing. Trapped on Tamayo Point, light years from the Citadel, he still remained under his father’s thumb. His one ally, his mother, dead, gone and cremated. 

How did his mother die? Why did it happen? Had she been sick? 

He had questions, so many of them and all the mail he had sent his father must have fell into dark space for all the answers he had gotten. The message that popped up in his inbox two weeks ago had been the first he had gotten in the four years he started studying at Brillantmont. His mother had been the one he was in contact with all this trime. 

As strained as his relationship with his father had been, Harry had never expected it to be this bad. This only served as a final nail in the coffin for their kinship. Darsh Patel was nothing more than a sperm donor, and the man that held his leash, keeping him chained to Brillantmont and Tamayo.

_Fuck him._

“Hmmm?” The girl rolled onto her back and looked at him, batting her eyelashes in a way she probably thought was alluring — it was not. “You’re talking to me Harry?”

Irritation flared. “No, you need to go. School’s starting soon.”

May? June? April? Whoever the fuck she was, stretched. The blanket rode up her torso, revealing pale skin underneath. She made no move to get up. 

Harry held back the sigh and stepped away from the window. Picking up her clothes, he roughly balled them up before tossing them onto the bed. “Up. I want you gone by the time I’m done with my shower.”

She groaned with that little trill at the end. She probably meant it to sound seductive, maybe it would have been if he was in the mood, but right now he couldn’t stand the mess his bed was in. And she was part of said mess. 

“Go. Now.”

She sighed. “Always with your bad boy act.” After she was dressed, she leaned against his table, one hand pressed against his terminal’s screen — he grimaced, filing away to clean the screen later. “So… I’ll see you later?”

Harry stared at her hand for a moment before tearing his gaze away. Shrugging, he cleared his throat and replied, “Sure.”

She beamed at him and stepped close. A finger traced a trail across his torso, making its way downwards, ever downwards. He stepped away, and she giggled. “See you later, Harry.”

_Later, in class. I’m not having you back here. One night and every woman thinks you’re their boyfriend. What the fuck?_

He tapped on his omni-tool and the holo-lock turned a satisfying red. Brillantmont had one thing going for it. Along with the expensive school fees that no doubt galled his father to pay for it, the boarding school provided top notch private accommodations to the students — no sharing required. He stripped the sheets off his bed and balled them into a laundry hamper. He’d get them exchanged for fresh sheets after his lessons. Shoving his messy emotions aside, he headed into his bathroom for a much needed shower. 

* * *

Harry stifled a yawn, his stylus tapping against his datapad. April — he decided that must have been her name, since that’s what her friends called her — caught his gaze and winked. The teacher, one Ms. Harris, cleared her throat pointedly. Her gaze was hard as she shot daggers at April. The others sniggered. Harry ignored them. 

All the plebs cared about was their next target — pussy, dick or both. Sending messages to each other in that oh-so-secret fashion via their omni-tools. All of them were nothing more than hormonal crazed teens. Harry was above this. Sure, he liked sex, he liked orgasms too, but this chasing was nothing more than ritual. One that no longer posed a challenge to him. When he put his mind to things, he would be the best at it. It was as simple as that. 

Harris' gaze lingered over on Harry for a bit before returning to her explanation of the equation on screen, seemingly satisfied with herself. Harry ignored her, having already grasped the rough concept in the ten minutes he had actually paid attention. Besides he had other more important things to focus on. 

Staring at his datapad, Harry compiled a list of questions he wanted to ask his father. That list stretched as long as his arm if he had bothered with pen and paper. The questions didn’t matter if his father was intent on keeping him here since vid-calls and mails had gotten him nothing. Harry had access to funds to drink it all away, even pay sex — anything but going home. It’d immediately be flagged up in his transactions and probably cancelled before he could get his ass on the shuttle. Tugging against the collar of his uniform, he never felt the leash around his neck more so than right now. 

“Make sure you complete your assignments!” Harris called out as everyone’s omni-tool buzzed, signalling the end of the class. “Patel-Carlyle, you still owe me last week’s work.”

Harry sighed. “The assignment doesn’t count to our final score.”

“It is to gauge your understanding of my class,” Harris pointed out. 

“I understand it just fine.” He shouldered his bag. Time to make his exit. “Don't worry about it.”

Harry didn’t have the chance to get far. On his way to his next class, he noticed April hissing at a bunch of boys. One of them had his hand tight over April’s wrist. When she noticed Harry, she tried to pull away, but the boy shoved her towards his friends. 

“Slade!” he shouted. “Do you know who you’re fucking with?”

Oh. One of those. Harry recognised what was happening, though he didn't know the boy demanding his attention. He had been on the receiving ends of these conversations too often to feel anything beyond mildly inconvenienced. 

Harry sighed, already bored. And there was that use of his nickname — Slade. He didn’t like it, but it beat being called Harry like a child. “You bet I do,” Harry replied easily, a smirk tugging on his lips. "I’ve been fucking your girlfriend."

The hallway went utterly silent. The boy’s face turned a deep red. Like a breath held in, it wasn’t going to last. The bubble popped, and the rest of the students grew excited. Some whistling to get their friends to come watch, others shouting, “Bold of you Slade!”

Still others took bets. Harry’s mind raced ahead. This was actually a good opportunity to make some credits, especially if he wanted to get to the bottom of his mother’s death. 

“Shall we get on with it?” Harry asked, gauging the boy’s willingness to defend his so-called rights over his girlfriend’s body autonomy. 

April got free and stood between them. “Harry, please, you can’t win. He—”

The boy shoved her aside — Harry glared at the boy, his gaze followed April to make sure she was okay. “Shut up bitch, I’d deal with you later.” He levelled his gaze on Harry, a confident sneer held upon his lips. “Let’s do this.”

Harry bit back his grin and raised a hand up. Turning, to the impromptu bookie taking bets near him, he said, “What are the odds?”

The salarian’s eyes shone. She glanced between them. “Even odds, I’m not made of money.”

That statement was only technically true since it was their parents, not them, who were rich Harry was no better, and he knew it. “5000 credits,” he said as he scanned his omni-tool over hers. It beeped, signalling the successful transfer. 

“Confidence!” the bookie smiled, her eyes sharp and appreciative. “I like that in a man. Good luck, Slade.” 

His father wouldn’t care if he threw a few thousand credits away. In fact, he would probably write it off as Harry frittering away the family fortune — but this was _his mother’s credits_. With a growl, Harry shoved Darsh Patel from his mind. He had no place here. Harry had a bet to win. 

“Let’s get on with it.”

* * *

Harry leaned against the bar and gazed out at the space. The club wasn’t particularly full. Adults mingling with teens here. Utsaah was one of the few places where one didn’t need to bribe the bouncer to turn a blind eye to underage drinkers. It was, after all, started by a bunch of Brillantmont dropouts. Today was his first time here, and he already liked the place. 

Clenching his fists, the skin stretched across his knuckles painfully. They were skinned and a little swollen. But he won the fight. _That_ had never been in doubt. 5000 credits easy money. This hadn’t been his first rodeo, but it was his first time fighting with a distinct purpose in mind. Knowing that it worked, he decided he needed a more concentrated effort in gathering more funds. 

Someone slid up his side. A warm weight pressed up to him. “Hmmm… a screwdriver. Drinking the big boy’s stuff huh?”

Harry frowned as he shot the woman a look. Standing slightly taller than him in her pair of stilettos, her dress left very little to the imagination. He couldn’t help rake his eyes over her body. She was no student for sure. Danger oozed from her every pore, and he couldn’t fight the shiver running down his spine. Flashing her his best smile with a show of teeth, just the right balance of naive teen and bad boy, he braced his elbow against the bar. 

_Girls lap this shit right up._

She laughed. That woke a flare of anger in the pit of his stomach. “Now that’s a better look on you,” she drawled, drawing a circle on the counter using the condensation from his glass. Her black painted nails glowed when the UV spotlight swept over the bar. Moving closer and closer to Harry’s hand with every circuit. He found himself curious about her. Usually he was the one picking a girl up and taking them back to his room. This felt different. 

Khathe caught Harry’s eyes, with all four of hers — a sign she meant it — and she shook her head surreptitiously. Working as the bartender and part owner of Utsaah, the batarian must have seen her fair share of shit. Harry, even if he was a borderline passing student of Brillantmont, wasn't stupid. He didn't need his parents to buy their way into a placement for him. That look Khathe threw him was clearly a warning, but since when did rules apply to him? Right now the more trouble he made for his father, the better. If it was expensive to fix, all the fucking better. 

Harry straightened. Time to regain the upper hand, he smiled, the kind that promised dark deeds and wicked pleasure. “Maybe you can get a better look…” He jerked his head towards the toilets. Beggars can’t be choosers, as long there was a semblance of privacy he was good to go.

Her eyes twinkled, alternatingly dark and bright under the strobing lights of Utsaah. Intent made her gaze heavy. Maybe the drink was getting to him, maybe the fight had got his blood up, he wanted to fuck this woman senseless. Rising to his feet, he held his arm out to her. She placed a hand in his. Khathe rolled her eyes and shook her head. 

Harry pressed his lips against the mysterious woman's hand, giving it a quick flick of his tongue. She giggled. “Clever, clever boy. If we hurry, maybe we can get two in.”

Harry chuckled. A little eagerly, he led her towards the back. And that was when the doors opened. He could have taken a bet out on this judging how bad his luck had been running recently. 

A group of humans strode in. Men, all of them. They spotted leather jackets too warm for the climate controlled weather of Tamayo Point. Their hair styled in varying heights, ranging from a full on mohawk at least twice the length of their head to clean shaven monk like. Not one of them looked like a typical Brillantmont student, for one thing they were all too old, bordering on adulthood. If Harry had to guess they were native Tamayoans. 

Tamayo Point boasted luxury resorts and an unlimited number of ways to spend credits quickly and foolishly. Gambling them away in the glitzy casinos, splurging on food imported from the furthest reaches of the Milky Way, pouring them into experiences both mental, physical and everything in between. With so much catered to the rich and idle, it had also bred a dark and dirty underbelly. Gangs such as this was one such symptom. 

Khathe groaned at the newcomers. The woman’s grip around Harry's waist stiffened and fell away. “Shit,” she hissed. 

“Ralph,” one of the new comers called out. “Looks like your girl got another one again.”

The woman started to pull away. “Ralph, it’s not what you think it is. I was just feeling dizzy, and he was helping me.”

Harry sighed inwardly. Twice in a single day had got to be some kind of record here. Ralph, a man no older than twenty, sporting a series of studs embedded on his face in place of eyebrows, stepped forward. “May, May, May, why you've got to hurt me so?”

_What’s with me and my luck with girls named after calendar months?_

Harry stood stock still, eyeing the five guys barring the only exit. Blood throbbed against his temples, his lungs laboured as his ribs tightened. What was this he was feeling? He couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

Ralph jerked his chin and his friends surrounded Harry. Patrons hastily got out of the way. They shoved anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor aside, leaving the patrons cramped into the corner. 

Oh, this was fear, this was excitement, this was a fucking rush. Harry grinned. 

“What? You need a gang to take on me, Ralph?” Harry taunted, dragging the man's name out in a drawl. "Take me on, one on one. If you're man enough."

Ralph stiffened, his smirk grew fixed. He closed the distance between them and pulled May towards him. She stepped into his embrace, not at all protesting. He bared his teeth in a snarl. "Get the fucker!"

Harry braced himself, but nobody rushed him. Glancing around, he realised someone had stepped forward from the ring of gangsters wannabes. Shorter than the others, with his black hair spiked up like an anime character, he spread his arms wide, holding the others back by his mere gesture. 

Khathe sighed. “I don’t want trouble here, Seng." She straightened and cleared her bar of all glasses and cups, dumping them noisily into the sink. "Kid's just being stupid. Let this go."

Harry bristled, but he knew when to shut his mouth unlike some of his peers. As much as he wanted a fight, he didn't want to die either. He had a deal to settle with his father first. 

"Relax, Khathe," Seng replied, his eyes dancing with anticipation under the flashing lights. "I'll cover the cost of any damages." He swiped his hand over his omni-tool— a cuff model, Harry noted — and the terminal at the bar pinged with a familiar chime of payment received. 

Harry blinked. Skipping lessons and bypassing the shitty ass excuse of a security around Brillantmont were everyday affairs for him. Seeing bucket loads of credits weren't all that rare too given the students at Brillantmont, but to see a Tamayoan throwing credits around this carelessly, that's entirely new. He was intrigued because if a Tamayoan could make this kind of credits, he needed to know how too. 

Seng turned his razor sharp gaze at him and back at Ralph. "Take him on, one on one." That wasn't a question, it wasn't even a statement, but an order. 

Khathe held up her hand and barked at the remaining patrons. "I'm not going to be responsible if any of you get hurt. Clear out or stay at your own risk." Half of them hurried out, those were tourists that had stumbled into the wrong club, the other half got very excited. These were also tourists but of a different kind. There were people who traveled to Thessia to see the peak of asari culture, there were people who traveled to Sur'Kesh to get the best medical care that credits could buy. These people were here to experience "real life" like how a poor person would. Harry couldn't be more disgusted. 

Khathe, obviously, didn't care. Customers were customers, credits were credits. She shot Seng a look, one pair of eyes glaring at him, the other pair at Ralph. "Try not to destroy too much stuff."

Seng jerked his chin at Ralph. Clearly, one was subordinate to the other. Harry studied Ralph. Those studs on his face looked painful, a good punch should cause some damage. His dyed blonde hair long and wavy would provide a good liability to exploit later. Harry smirked, and Ralph growled wordlessly. He couldn't help the snigger forcing its way out his lips. Why was it so easy to push his button? Ralph was no better than April's boyfriend this morning. 

_Stupid, stupid people, losing the fight before it started._

Ralph made a big show of shrugging out of his leather jacket and handing it to May. Harry waited, content to give him his little show. Harry himself, though not quite dressed for a fight, wore a serviceable black long sleeved shift, a matching light grey vest, a pair of chino, leather dress shoes and topped off with a red scarf around his neck. The only thing he cared about his entire getup was the watch he had. It had belonged to his maternal grandfather, given to him by his mother. Right now, it was more precious than everything else he had in his dorm. Unbuckling the watch, he slid it across the bar towards Khathe. Their eyes met — his two against her four. She nodded, understanding instantly. It was nice to be able to communicate without actually speaking. 

"Are you all taking bets?" he asked, flashing a grin.


	2. Rakuen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The doors disengaged and music slammed into them. The boom of a krogan bombor was unmistakable. Stepping out of the elevator, Seng greeted a few people along the way as he led them inside. The corridor opened up to reveal a centre stage. Sure enough a krogan dominated the stage. She stomped her bare feet, gouging furrows into the stage. Her hands a fast blur as she slapped the bombor strapped to her torso, stacking rhythmic layers upon layers. Harry had never seen such a display before. Krogans were not typically known for their musical talents. The interplay between the different sounds took his breath away, each beat a physical force smacking him in the face.
> 
> Beside the krogan bombor player stood an asari, dressed in a flowing robe secured around her waist with a sash. The neckline descended down —down, down, down — her chest, between her breasts. If it wasn’t for the sash, the entire robe would have revealed _everything_. Seng laughed, and Harry noticed he had taken a step forward without meaning to. Harry might not be attracted to asaris but, breasts were breasts. And he was still sixteen and hot blooded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. Cover art as always by the awesome [Seo Kanori](https://www.seokanori.com). 
> 
> Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/). She just updated [her fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593991/chapters/68324881)

“Hey! Bulldog’s here!” Seng called out as Harry entered Utsaah. 

Strobing lights, flashing red, blue and green, synced with the lows of thumping bass and the highs of a biotically strummed guitar, greeted him. Since the fight, Harry had acquired a new nickname and found himself suddenly a new addition to the all human gang, Kilo Streeters, named after the particular section of Tamayo Point. And now drinking and smoking with them whenever he saw them in Utsaah was the norm. 

Seng, the leader, had never been more delighted when Harry forced Ralph to yield that day. Harry didn’t see any downsides with a little drinking and smoking, and hopefully, finding out how the Kilo Streeters make their credits. They weren’t rolling in it, but for a street gang that didn’t seem to do much, they were leading rather comfortable lives. Harry didn't have to try too hard befriending the guys in the gang. Between bringing a different girl around to the back bathrooms on a nightly basis, slowly drinking through Khathe's entire stock one bottle at a time without a care for the price and smoking whatever the Kilo Streeters offered, Harry had built a certain reputation for himself. Smoking turned to conversation — less with Ralph or his girlfriend May, whom Ralph kept close, nearly glued to his side — more with the others like Carlos, Aarav, Faizal, Brayan and of course, Seng. 

"Bulldog!" the rest chorused and Harry winced, less about the actual nickname but the almost comical effect they had as a group. 

“Off worlder more like,” Ralph sneered. “He’s just nothing but another One-Percenter.” 

Well, Harry wasn’t about to stoop to their sense of fashion, leather jackets, metal studs and all. Ralph’s eyebrows still looked tellingly bare. Harry's fist had made quite an impression — pun intended — forcing him to rethink his studs for eyebrows-look. If nothing, Harry figured he did Ralph a favour. That particular look wasn’t good on him, or anyone. 

“So what if I am?” Harry retorted. “You guys aren’t exactly worse off either.”

Ralph snorted, refusing to budge to give him room around the table. Harry wasn’t about to go begging for scraps. He made his way over to Khathe who rolled all four of her eyes at him. “Bulldog now huh?” she asked. 

“What about it?” Harry was already all stiff and irritated. Coming here, continuously drinking with these Tamayoans had been a means to an end but between making it to class, doing his bare minimal of school assignments and making sure he didn’t actually flunk out — although on second thought it might be an easier and cheaper way to get see his father, not that his pride allowed him to fail — his patience had been frayed thin. 

“Easy there, human,” she snorted, nostrils flaring, brow creasing. “Just trying to look out for my best customer.” She gestured at the writhing bodies on the dance floor. More than one of them were actually stupid enough to wear Brillantmont’s uniform here. He had never seen a clearer invitation for a mugging. 

Harry shrugged. “Give me a glass of your batarian whiskey.”

Khathe grunted. She picked up a tall glass and depressed the levers for one of the taps. A clear liquid with a viscosity thicker than regular alcohol filled it. Picking up a tall implement, she twisted it over the drink. It cracked like how peppercorns would in a pepper grinder. Black flakes coated the top liberally. She placed it in front of him. “Your biyara.”

Harry was in the midst of sending his payment when one of the Kilo Streeters bump up against him. He held his snarl of annoyance in. "Buy me one?" Carlos asked, lifting his finger and jabbing at a bottle of Serric Ice brandy. 

Even Harry would have had baulked at the price of a bottle of _that_. And he knew had he agreed, it would open the flood gates for more of such requests, completely defeating the purpose of putting up with Seng and the Kilo Streeters. "No," he snapped. "Seng has the credits, ask him for it."

"Bulldog's no fun." Carlos scoffed. 

Another presence came up on his other side. Harry stiffened. With these guys, he could never drop his guard. He could go from being a fun member to have hanging around them to a mark at a drop of a hat. "Leave him be," Seng said, shooing Carlos away. "I'd get you a Jack or something."

Khathe obliged, programming a drone to send a bottle for the table. Seng signalled for a biyara for himself. He took a tentative sip, almost choking on the thicker consistency. Clearing his throat roughly, his gelled up hair shaking from its roots to their tips, he grimaced. "How can you drink this? It's like glue."

Harry chuckled. The first indication of amusement since he arrived. "An acquired taste." The biyara slid down his throat, cool, refreshing and surprisingly tangy and sweet. The black bits on top provided a spicy bite, cutting through the sweetness well. "So more drinking and smoking today?" 

Seng made a face as he took a second sip. He glared at the glass like it offended him somehow, but he seemed determined to finish his biyara even if it killed him. "No," he said. "I've got something interesting planned."

Harry's eyes narrowed. This might be what he had been waiting for. Taking a careful drink, he kept his face impassive. He grunted and shrugged at that, the height of disinterest. Seng took another sip and stuck his tongue out, twisting his lips. He shoved the glass at Harry. "Finish this for me, then come and get me." Seng mistook Harry's feigned boredem as one of doubt. "Trust me, you'd like it."

One pair of Khathe's eyes followed Seng's walk back to the others. "Stupid humans," she growled, reaching out to take Seng's glass away. "Waste of perfectly good biyara." 

"Leave it, I'd finish it. It's hard to find good biyara."

Khathe blinked, all four eyelids and actually smiled at him, fangs and all, for the first time in weeks since he started coming. Was she impressed? Harry couldn't tell. 

* * *

So once biyara disappeared down his throat, slowly savoured of course, Harry wasn’t a savage, Seng led the way with an arm around Harry's shoulder — which Harry continually removed — to what looked like a skycar parking complex. VI terminals lined the exterior, glowing brightly, waiting for customers to retrieve their vehicles and upon making payment. They were still within Kilo Quarters, maybe a twenty minutes’ walk from Utsaah. Cracks and graffiti marred the exterior facade. The complex was in dire need of an overhaul. This definitely was a place frequented by the locals than thrill seeking tourists. 

"What the hell are we doing here?" Harry asked, a niggling doubt pinging his mind. Were they going to mug him? Why the fuck did he wear his watch? He resisted the urge to turn around. Jaw set, shoulders straight, he forced himself onwards. Confidence was key, it was half the battle. 

Seng gestured towards the elevator — not the ones used by people — but the one that brought skycars to the ground level if their owners decided so. The elevator felt too big and too small at the same time. If Seng and the Kilo Streeters decided to turn on him here, he would be trapped. Seng smiled at him, seemingly smelling fear. Harry drew himself up, he was the tallest of the bunch. Good nutrition almost always win out. He returned grin for grin, forcing his shoulders to relax. 

Harry had expected the elevator to bring them up, instead Ralph fiddled with his omni-tool. The control panel on the elevator chimed in response. “Going down,” the VI said. 

“Down?” Harry frowned. This was a fucking _Skycar_ parking complex — emphasis on the sky. It made no sense to have a basement. 

The gears engaged, and they groaned to life, another testament to the age of this complex. The elevator jerked and descended. This thing better not die half way down to wherever they were headed to. Seng’s grin only grew wider. 

Harry studied the others. They chatted among themselves, finishing what cigs still stuck between their lips, Ralph smooching May in a corner with one eye pinned on him — a sense of misplaced superiority pouring from him. Harry refrained from rolling his eyes and ignored him. They were relaxed, not at all like a bunch of people ready to jump him. The Kilo Streeters weren’t the sharpest tool in the box, except for Seng, after all he was the one with credits to burn all the damn time. Harry exhaled, allowing himself to relax a notch when his ears popped. How fucking low did this go, and where the hell was Seng taking him? Despite himself, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on their ends. 

The gears groaned as the brakes engaged, jerking the entire elevator to a halt. Ralph bumped his head against the wall and the others laughed. Ralph glared at Harry like it was his fault. Over the noise of the gears, Harry heard a steady thump of a bassline. 

_Another club?_

The doors disengaged and music slammed into them. The boom of a krogan bombor was unmistakable. Stepping out of the elevator, Seng greeted a few people along the way as he led them inside. The corridor opened up to reveal a centre stage. Sure enough a krogan dominated the stage. She stomped her bare feet, gouging furrows into the stage. Her hands a fast blur as she slapped the bombor strapped to her torso, stacking rhythmic layers upon layers. Harry had never seen such a display before. Krogans were not typically known for their musical talents. The interplay between the different sounds took his breath away, each beat a physical force smacking him in the face.

Beside the krogan bombor player stood an asari, dressed in a flowing robe secured around her waist with a sash. The neckline descended down —down, down, down — her chest, between her breasts. If it wasn’t for the sash, the entire robe would have revealed _everything_. Seng laughed, and Harry noticed he had taken a step forward without meaning to. Harry might not be attracted to asaris but, breasts were breasts. And he was still sixteen and hot blooded. 

Pushing past the crowd between them and the stage, he tried to get a closer look — no, not at the breasts, though if he was truthful, it was _a little_ about them — at the curved metal tube set on a stand before asari. The asari weaved shimmering blue energy like an extension of her body, feeding it through the tube as she desired. Fingers danced across the holes drilled into the tube. Was that a xulabion? An instrument only played by the asari and only recently picked up biotics of other species.

Harry didn’t know what he had expected coming here. Deep under a boring crumbling skycar parking complex, he found crowds of people of all species enjoying alien music and having fun. Over in the far corner, there was continuous cheers over what sounded like a fight. Another corner had tables laid out in games of chance and skills. 

“What the fuck is this place?” Harry demanded. 

Seng laughed. “Welcome to Rakuen.”

* * *

Harry didn't think Seng or any Tamayoans could blow his mind. After all, he was the one getting an elite education, one of the best credits could buy. Here he stood, looking at what was the crossroads of cultural experiences and the thrills of blood pumping street battles. This invigorated him like nothing but sex would. 

"So why are we here?" he asked. "Not to listen to the duo on stage I assume."

"Of course not," Carlos said, smacking his shoulder. "We're here for the Ring."

The roar of cheers grew louder as they approached, so much so it drowned out the bombor. Someone hailed Seng and their little group and they got a space around the edges of Ring. Two turians, sans their usual armour, clad only in their bodysuits, were inside a omni-barrier cage hitting the shit out of each other. Dark blue blood flecked across the concrete. When the black plated, white tattooed turian landed a knee against the slate grey’s groin, the human part of the crowd winced as one. The grey fell and the other quickly locked her opponent in a neck hold. 

"Yield!" she roared. 

Harry noticed they had holo tags attached to their suits around their chests, proclaiming their names. The grey, Caeso, struggled for a couple of seconds but gave up when she found her air slowly but surely being crushed from her windpipe. 

"I yield."

Half the spectators cheered. They made a beeline towards the various terminals dotting the walls to get their winnings while the other half tossed their chits at the Ring in disgust. Harry was beginning to see how Seng got his credits. Rakuen had no shortage of ways to make them. The Ring looked like his best bet. Ignoring the others, he headed over to the terminals and checked the odds he could get on different fighters. Without weeks and months of research and study he wouldn't be able to place bets with any accuracy. 

But what if...

Harry pushed his way back towards the Ring. Most of the spectators had left to seek nourishments or to place the bets for the next fight. Drones swept out to clean up and sterilise the Ring. Seng had betting chits in hand as he leaned against the barrier. Ralph and May were necking — again — next to him. Harry refrained from rolling his eyes — again — instead he asked, “Tell me how this whole thing works.”

"Putting credits down yourself?" Seng asked, his eyebrows raised. 

The crowd returned as a fresh new pair stepped into the ring. This time, a salarian pair. They stripped out of their clothes. One of them was a tan and surprisingly stocky salarian, Nulban, judging by the holo tag secured around his waist, decided to go bare chest. The other, Umin was a deep green with horns longer than usual, kept his body suit on. 

"Only people who can foot the registration fee can enter themselves or their fighters to the Ring.” Seng jerked his head towards one end of the Ring. A group gathered there, speaking to the tan salarian, and there was a similar situation at the other end around the other competitor. "There are clubs training people just to fight here."

"Gangs you mean?" Harry pointed out. 

"To-mah-to, to-may-to." Seng shrugged. "Anyway the winning club gets a bonus from Rakuen, and of course they tend to bet heavily on the result. A lot of credits change hands here."

A drone whirled from one group to another, no doubt collecting said registration fee. The gears in Harry's head churned. An alarm rang out. The groups retreated, leaving only the fighters in the circular battlefield. An orange barrier snapped up, stretching from floor to ceiling. Harry reached out with a finger towards it. The barrier felt solid, unyielding and warm. Putting pressure on it did nothing but ground his finger against the surface. 

"Matches are differentiated between biotic and non biotics and then by species, different bonuses apply. The crowd can tip but who the fuck tips the fighters? Depending on how experienced a fighter is and what their winning rate was, different odds apply."

Another alarm rang. The barrier between the fighters dropped. The salarians charged at each other. Fists swung, legs swept, they moved quickly than his eye could follow. Feints and counter strikes blurred before Harry's eyes. He still had questions, but Seng's attention was wholly fixed on the fight. Glancing at the betting chits Seng clutched in his hand, Harry read the fighters' names off the chit. 

> Nulban vs. Umin
> 
> Primary bet: 500 credits on Oxo winning
> 
> Primary odds: 2 to 1
> 
> Supplementary bet: 500 credits on match ending under 180 standard seconds
> 
> Supplementary odds: 50 to 1

So the key hung on the supplementary bet, it wouldn’t matter if Oxo won or not — if the match ended under 180s with a 50 to 1 odds, Seng stood to win 25,000 credits. Harry grinned, his heart thumping faster not from the thrill of the fight, but what he had potentially found. 

Harry had no love for his father. The man sired him, but he had barely been a father. With his mother dead and gone, his chest tightened painfully at the thought, he had no desire to follow the path his father forced him on. At the same time, Harry was keenly aware how much he relied on his father for everything, from the clothes he wore to the education he was getting.

Harry's initial plan had been to gather enough credits for a shuttle flight to the Citadel, to confront his father. In the weeks since he had reconsidered. So what if he went, what then after? All his father had to do was to freeze his accounts and credit chits, Harry would be forced to come to heel quickly enough. No, his purpose had changed. He wanted true independence, he needed it. To continue being tied to his father was unbearable. He wouldn’t stay like his mother did, allowing his father to reel in him when he desired and cast him aside when his father was done. 

Eyes pinned on the fighters, Nulban twisted his legs around Umin’s chest as the pair struggled on the concrete. “Yield!”

The crowd’s response was split in two. Half chanted, “Yield” while the other hand screamed their defiance. Umin twisted, slipping out of his opponent’s grip using their mingled blood and sweat as lubrication. Nulban caught by surprise ate Umin’s foot right in his face. The crowd went silent. Umin stood over his opponent. His fists held up ready for the counter attack. It didn’t come. A drone floated out to the pair. Orange scan lines swept over Nulban. 

“Match over, Nulban KO.” A voice rang out over the Ring. “Umin is the winner.”

The barrier fell. The spectators departed again, for more betting, for more alcohol, or just to go relieve themselves. Harry stood at the Ring watching fight after fight, seeing the cycle repeating itself over again and again. He didn’t bother asking Seng if he had won or not. He wasn’t interested. With a goal, Harry started formulating a plan, and he was going to see this through. 

* * *

Another morning, another sleepless night. Harry sighed. His breath condensing against the glass. A short groan came from the bed behind him. The dawning day cycle outlined the naked body in his bed. Stretched out against white sheets, dusky skin and an even darker nipple greeted his sight. His own penis, limp and flaccid, he had enough the night — morning, whatever — before. He was pretty sure the other rooms beside his had their fill too. It was after all a point of pride to have a woman screaming his name in ecstasy. Despite his inattention to bedroom matters recently, it felt good knowing he hadn’t lost this touch. 

Swiping his finger across his omni-tool, he read the latest message from his father — ostensibly his father — it more likely came from his latest personal assistant he was no doubt fucking. Anger built in his chest like a volcano threatening to erupt. Was this why his mother died? His father had pushed her to the brink. She could no longer stand this farce of a marriage they had? 

No. 

Harry yanked his mind back, his mother wouldn’t do this to him, she wouldn’t. His ribs squeezed so tight he couldn’t breathe. Heat grew in his eyes, and he blinked back the strange moisture gathering. Jaw tight, hands formed fists, his nostrils flared— 

A hand curled around his waist, and Harry flinched. Spinning on his heel, his eyes widened, he realised who it was. 

Harris. 

“Harry,” Harris called out at first, sleepily. She stretched and sat up, but when he didn't respond, she stared at him and pressed a hand against her mouth. “Harry are you all right? You don’t look too good.”

A snarl curled his lips as he stepped away from her. Her presence was suddenly undesirable. Her eyes had seen too much. That authoritative tone creeping into her voice. Harris hadn’t sounded like that when he was fucking her. She had screamed his name in a voice he bet nobody had heard before. They weren’t in the classroom. She wasn’t his teacher, and he wasn’t a student. 

“Harry,” Harris called again. “Do you want to sit down?”

What the fuck, was she pitying him? Harry couldn’t help the almost hysterical laugh that threatened to push past his lips. They stood naked in his room. The day cycle almost upon them, and she was trying to what? Mother him? Who gave her the right to do that? 

“No,” he forced himself to say. “You need to leave.”

She bit down on her lip. Something flickered across her eyes. Concern? Pity? Regret? Either way, they had fucked, it was way too late for regrets. Harris should have thought it through before accepting his invitation. Hell, he hadn’t tried _that_ hard either. She knew what she was getting into. 

Harry held himself stiffly, anger had shoved the grief right back into a locked box. “You need to leave,” he repeated. “You don’t want to be seen leaving my room once everyone else wakes up.”

Harris blinked, something within her seemed to shift. Taking one more look at him, she dipped her gaze and picked her clothes up before making her way into his bathroom. It was only when she removed herself from his sight that he sank back onto his bed. Elbows braced against his thighs, he bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut. His pulse throbbed hard against his throat as his hands shook. 

_Get a fucking grip._

Harris emerged from his bathroom dressed. She glanced at him. He met her gaze almost defiantly, daring her to speak a word of worry, of concern. Her lips parted. Words lay poised on the tip of her tongue. The same lips that took his penis and sucked him off the night before, the same tongue that licked a path from his chest down to his groin. His eyes hardened. They did not have a relationship, she was the fucking adult, she should know that. She didn’t need to show him care. They fucked, that was it. Her mouth clamped shut. Without a word, she left. 

The moment the holo-lock turned red, he surged to his feet and stripped the sheets off with a fury that threatened to rip them. Once done, he stomped off into the bathroom and stood under the shower. The water was as cold as he could make it, but it barely made a dent in the fire burning in his chest. When his shower beeped, signalling he had gone over his daily allotted water, and he would be charged a significantly higher rate for every litre used thereafter, he finally started to move. Hands reaching out for the premium scented body gel provided by the school, he squeezed the bottle so hard, he ended up more than he needed. Working the gel into a foam, he scrubbed so hard his skin turned a deep dark red. 

By the time Harry stepped out of the shower, he felt in control again. His plan was set. The credits had been transferred to a chit, based on his research it would only be enough for a single bout of fight. He had to make it count. More waiting, more siphoning of credits wasn’t going to help. He was as ready as he could humanly be. 

Stepping in front of his wardrobe, he pulled the doors open and stared inside. A few sets of his white and blue school uniform hung on one end, still wrapped in the plastic that came from the school’s laundry. The rest of the space was taken up by his clothes. They came in varying shades of white, grey and brown — earth tones as his mother liked to call it. Harry slammed the door down that path of thought quickly. His omni-tool buzzed. He glanced at it and dismissed the alarm. It was the one that reminded him he needed to get ready for school. With a sigh, he reached towards his uniform, his hand hovered in midair when he turned and looked at the credit chit sitting on his desk. 

_Fuck it._

Skipping school wasn’t new, and nobody blinked an eye anyway as long as Harry continued to pass his exams. He had more important things to do today. And he most decidedly did not want to see Harris. Pocketing the credit chit, he strode out of his room. 

* * *

Khathe looked up as Harry entered. "You're early." She glanced at her omni-tool. "Very early. Don't you have school?" Harry stiffened, and she raised her hands up. "Fine, fine, fucking kids. What will it be? I don't serve breakfast just so you know."

He sank into the bar stool and peered at a half eaten roll Khathe had on the counter. "That. And some information."

Two hours later, Seng arrived in rumpled clothes. "What the fuck, Bulldog? It's early." He scowled and braced himself against the nearest table and slumped into the chair. 

"Early? It's noon," Harry pointed out. 

"I've not ended the night, all right? Lay off." Seng rested his forehead against his arms, looking ready to go to bed. 

Harry had half a mind to leave him where he laid, but he wasn't sure he could navigate Rakuen safely without a guide of sorts. Khathe shouted, "Order something or I'm tossing you out."

Seng raised his head up, eyes blinking blearily. "I ain't got no credits." He glanced at Khathe then back at Harry meaningfully. When Harry folded his arms across his chest, making no move to do anything, Seng sighed. "Lost it all just now, last night. You get the idea."

"Get him something." Harry gave in after holding Seng's gaze for a bit. 

"I'm not a fucking mind reader. What the fuck is something?" Khathe asked. "Biyara?"

Seng stiffened and shook his head. "Anything but that."

"A Tiger."

"Why didn’t you say so in the first place?" She walked over and slammed a glass bottle down on the table, making Seng jump. With a quick twist, she popped the cap, but she didn't leave. 

Harry swiped a finger across his omni-tool and hers chimed. Khathe grunted and returned to cleaning the bar. The few patrons in there, mostly other students skipping classes and a couple of locals, returned to their own business now that drama wasn't about to happen. Harry slid into the chair opposite Seng's. 

Seng rubbed his eyes and took a long pull from the bottle. "What the fuck did you get me here so early for? I got no credits left." 

Harry leaned forward, elbows braced against the table. "Something that will make you and me a little richer."

* * *

"Bulldog! Bulldog!" The crowd roared. It filled Harry's ears. Closing his eyes for a moment, he savoured the physical weight of all those eyes. The sheer exhilaration of what was to come filled his lungs, expanding his ribs almost painfully. 

He exhaled, blowing the air out of his lungs explosively. With deliberate slowness, he shrugged out of his hoodie — black, generic and had no identifying brands. It didn't pay to stand out from the crowd especially if you won and didn't have the backing of a substantial club. He didn't wear anything else underneath it. No sense in getting the rest of his clothes bloodstained, the hoodie was enough of a sacrificial lamb. The next to go was his sweat pants, also black, also generic. He folded it up carefully and stacked it on top of his hoodie. Well, he wasn't quite so fool hardy as to fight completely nude like he had seen some asaris do. He wore a pair of black compression shorts just for the fight. That it doubled up as a pair of underwear was an additional perk. 

Harry had spent a good number of years playing competitive rugby for Brillantmont. Being a grand old age of sixteen, with a metabolism that only biotics could match, he didn't have to try very hard to stay in shape. Though he wasn’t ripped, he looked good. Supple muscles played under his dark skin as he wrapped both his hands. Securing the straps, he glanced across the Ring at his opponent — another boy going through similar preparations. 

“Bulldog,” Seng called out. “Don’t forget about your tag.”

Harry took it from Seng and secured it around his waist. It blazed his name “Bulldog” in orange. 

After that very first bout, Seng quickly saw the upsides of their new arrangement. The Kilo Streeters quickly started revolving around Harry and his activities in the Ring. Terms were semi-negotiated. Harry had a team supporting him. 

“What’s the target today?” Harry asked. 

“Same as last week,” Carlos replied, handing him a water bottle. 

Harry drank deep and went through his stretches to limber up. “So five minutes?”

“Yeah.”

The drone whirled out into the middle of the Ring, signalling the imminent start of the fight. Harry handed the bottle back and walked over. The crowd buzzed with anticipation. Seng had the betting chits clutched in his hand. Harry had already earned what he had initially invested. Everything going forward was pure profit, of course _if_ he didn’t lose. Carlos gave him two thumbs’ up. Even Ralph looked eager. The rest had their own bets on the line as well. 

Harry turned his attention back on his opponent. “Sly” his tag read. Looking past Sly, his club members glared daggers at him. The drone chimed, and the countdown began. The crowd chanted along. 

“Three!” Harry widened his stance and lowered his centre of gravity. 

“Two!” He clenched his fists, tucked his elbows in, and held them up to his face. 

“One!” The breath he had been holding in, hissed out through clenched teeth. 

“Fight!”

Sly swung wildly as soon as the barrier between them dropped. Harry sidestepped easily, countering with a jab against Sly’s ribs. He smiled, confidence surged forth as he danced forward and slammed a fist into Sly’s other side. 

Sly might be taller, endowed with the longer reach. He might have looked tougher, scars littered across his skin. But fuck, he was a rank amateur. Sloppy, fucking sloppy. Harry couldn’t help but cast a critical eye over his opponent. He telegraphed all his attacks long before they landed. Holding his arms loosely by his side, not even keeping them tight against his sides, protecting himself. It was all Harry could do to keep himself from snorting. Five minutes to end the fight was more than enough. Sly was new to the Ring, and it fucking showed. 

With a snarl, Harry surged forward. Ducking under the swing that met him, his bent knees powered upwards, sending his fist slamming into Sly’s chin. Sly’s head snapped backwards. Even Harry couldn't help but wince. Sympathy aside, he sent his other fist at Sly, aiming at his nose. Sly sensing danger staggered backwards, but Harry wasn’t about to allow his quarry from escape. Too much rode on this outcome for him to go soft. 

Sly swung a haymaker. Reach won out this time as Harry felt the impact against his brow. Pain flared, and his vision went white for a second. He shook his head and blinked quickly. 

“Three minutes left!” Harry heard Seng screaming. “Hurry up!”

Harry wiped the blood trickling into his eye with the back of his hand. And he danced. Though untrained, he had gotten into enough fights to know in a street fight where there were no rules, speed was of the essence. The longer this got drawn out, the less stamina and strength he’d have. He might have been built for the long drawn match of rugby, this was anything but alike. Sly grinned, but it looked forced. In fact Sly kept blinking his eyes. Something was probably wrong. 

“Do you yield?” Harry asked. He’d take an easy victory any day. 

Sly bared his teeth. “Never.”

Well, he had tried. Without waiting for Sly to finish speaking, he dropped and swept his foot out, hooking Sly’s foot and tipping him off balance. As Sly slammed onto the concrete, Harry rushed in and threw a fist into his face. 

“Do you yield?” Harry repeated. 

Sly’s answer was to buck, attempting to roll out of the way. Harry straddled his hips and kept him pinned. Sly looked bad. What wasn’t bruised and swollen was cut and bleeding. That was typical of most fights, what wasn’t was the daze look Sly’s face took on. Unfocused eyes and slowed reactions only made matters worse. He should yield, he just was being fucking stubborn. Harry was here to make a quick buck, not to kill someone. He had no desire to continue hurt Sly more than he already was. 

“Do you fucking yield?” 

Sly groaned, but he twisted around as struggling to rise. Harry growled in frustration, shifting his weight he used his knees to pin Sly’s arms down. 

“Call the count!” Harry yelled. 

Seng got the hint and got the rest of the Kilo Streeters to shout. “Ten! Nine! Eight…”

With each count, Sly struggled harder. It took all Harry’s willpower not to just hit him one more time. 

“Seven! Six! Five…”

“Please, I can’t lose,” Sly slurred pleadingly. His one good eye trying to stare mercy into Harry, the other had long since swell shut. His legs jerked as he tried to gain leverage to unseat Harry. 

“Four! Three! Two…”

Tears started spilling from Sly’s eyes, snot from his nose. Both mixing into an awful slurry down his face. It made for a pitiful sight. Harry wasn’t completely without sympathy, but he had his own goals too. Rakuen — The Ring — wasn’t for the weak. 

“One!”

The crowd roared as the drone chimed, letting the barriers down. Harry stood and stepped away from Sly. Feeling a little dizzy, a little light headed, he closed his eyes. The Ring vibrated. The pent up energy that built during the fight snapped as that final alarm rang. 

“Bulldog, the winner,” the VI intoned. 

Harry tilted his head backwards and just breathed. All the aches and pain were making themselves known — his fists, his brow, his ribs and thighs. But he won, he fucking won. Before he caught his breath, a weight slammed into his back.

“You fucking did it!” Seng shouted into his ear. With his arm around Harry’s shoulder, the difference in height between the two of them made even starker as his weight forced Harry to bend. Annoyance flared, but it got quickly smothered by the sheer thrill of the others when they piled up around him. It seemed credits really was the best social lubrication. 

“Our days of hacking vending machines for credits are over!” Ralph screamed. “We’re rich!”

Harry opened his eyes and allowed himself a small smile. Wiping the blood from his face, he pushed away from the others to go get cleaned up. The drones were chasing them off anyway. The Ring needed cleaning after that match. Picking up his bag, he fished for a towel to wipe himself down. 

“You should get that looked at,” Carlos said, pointed at the cut on his brow. 

Harry checked it over using the camera app on his omni-tool. It did looked nasty. He figured he could stitch it up himself when he got back to his room. As he shrugged into his hoodie, he couldn’t help but feel eyes on him. Eyes keen, he scanned the Ring. spectators were queueing at the terminals, placing bets and collecting their winnings. All except one. His eyes narrowed. Even with the distance between them, the man — definitely a man, definitely human — nodded at him. 

“Who is that?” Harry asked as he studied the man. The man stuck out like a sore thumb for some reason beyond staring creepily at Harry. 

“Who?” Seng craned his neck to see. 

Harry sensed when Seng spotted the man. That moment when a person’s body went all stiff and rigid. “That’s Viper. Stay away from him. He’s trouble.”

Harry nodded, filing the information away. Given Seng’s reaction, he figured, whoever or whatever Viper represented, he would need to tread carefully. As he collected his winnings and parted ways with the Kilo Streeters, he realised why Viper stood out. It was his clothes. They were well made, they fitted. He looked more like an older Brillantmont kid, a senior or possibly a graduate. 

The thought had completely slipped Harry's mind by the time he made it back to his room. Dropping his bag on the floor, he stripped out of his clothes and tossed them into the shower stall. No need to get the school board all suspicious by sending bloody clothes to the laundry. He’d wash them as he showered later. First, he needed to stitch that fucking cut up. Cuts were part of his life. It came with the territory of playing rugby and fighting random boys for sleeping with their girlfriends. Nobody bat an eyelid over them. 

Snapping on the lights in the bathroom, a newly stocked fist aid kit laid on the sink. Popping it open, he laid out the tools and supplies he needed. Mise en place applied to first aid as well as cooking as far as Harry was concerned. 

He washed his hands, making sure to get between his fingers and the back of his hands as well. Once dried, he snapped on a pair of gloves and then stepped into his shower to run cold water on his face. Once he was relatively sure his face was clean enough, he stepped out, drying his feet on the mat to make sure he didn’t just leave puddles everywhere. The bleeding had stopped, but the cut was too deep for simple butterfly stitches. Regular old needle and thread it was. 

He worked the needle through his skin, stitch by stitch, to close the wound. Ignoring the sharp jabs against his skin, the odd sensation of the thread pulling through his flesh, he worked slowly and methodically. There was sheer artistry in doctors mending what had been broken and shattered. First aid, medicine, that was useful knowledge. Not learning how to fucking do math by hand, they had calculators in their fucking omni-tools now. It beat sitting in class learning about dumb stuff. 

Sighing, he checked over his stitches, it wasn’t great, but it was the best he could manage right now. He applied some med-gel and instantly the sharp pain faded to a dull throb. Covering it with a waterproof dressing, he stepped back into the stall for a proper shower. 

When Harry collapsed into his bed, exhaustion weighing his bones down, nothing could keep the smile off his face. The credits he won today wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but a month in, he could see this thing had legs. This was the start of true independence from his father and to find out what the fuck happened to his mother. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mise en place - French culinary phrase which means "putting in place" or "everything in its place".
> 
> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!


	3. Viper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The buzz of the tattoo gun lulled Harry to sleep, but he was lying down so he guessed it would be fine. Tiny pin pricks stabbed across his skin. In and out, in and out, injecting ink under his dermis. He closed his eyes, visualising the path of the tattoo gun, wielded expertly by Alvia. 
> 
> “Still with me, Bulldog?” Alvia asked, her double-flanged voice buzzing almost in sync with her paintbrush of choice. 
> 
> Harry hummed. “Yeah, but I must admit this is very soothing.”
> 
> “You’re addicted to it already,” she laughed, going over a small patch on his chest, again and again. “This is what? Your third tattoo in a year?”
> 
> It indeed had been. Harry couldn’t believe it himself. He had hung around the Kilo Streeters and had been fighting in the Ring for the better part of a year. His tiny little credit cache had grown substantially, but it would never be enough for a proper university education, let alone being able to afford living expenses. He had one more year to gather funds. When he turned eighteen, he was determined to make his own way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. 
> 
> Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/)

The buzz of the tattoo gun lulled Harry to sleep, but he was lying down so he guessed it would be fine. Tiny pin pricks stabbed across his skin. In and out, in and out, injecting ink under his dermis. He closed his eyes, visualising the path of the tattoo gun, wielded expertly by Alvia. 

“Still with me, Bulldog?” Alvia asked, her double-flanged voice buzzing almost in sync with her paintbrush of choice. 

Harry hummed. “Yeah, but I must admit this is very soothing.”

“You’re addicted to it already,” she laughed, going over a small patch on his chest, again and again. “This is what? Your third tattoo in a year?”

It indeed had been. Harry couldn’t believe it himself. He had hung around the Kilo Streeters and had been fighting in the Ring for the better part of a year. His tiny little credit cache had grown substantially, but it would never be enough for a proper university education, let alone being able to afford living expenses. He had one more year to gather funds. When he turned eighteen, he was determined to make his own way. 

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. Getting tattooed had a therapeutic effect on him. Having read up about it on the extranet, he understood that endorphins flooded his brain due to the sensation caused by the needle. But maybe when it was all said and done, he was a little addicted. 

“So who’s the special girl?” Alvia asked. 

Harry hummed. “What girl? I have a different on my arm every single day of the week.”

She chuckled. “That’s true, but if you’re getting one of their names etched into your skin. It has to be a special girl, this Elizabeth.”

He didn’t speak as the solid weight pressed down against his chest, a weight that wasn’t physical. His mother had been dead and gone for a year. He hadn’t been allowed to go visit her niche at the Carlyle family plot. Today marked the first anniversary of her death, he felt it was the right time to do this. As much as this was no big secret, he didn’t think anyone deserved to know the truth. This was his, and it was private. 

“Yes, she’s a special girl,” he whispered. “The most special of them all.”

Pain swelled like a wave and crashed over him. It set him drifting. 

The sensation reminded him of stitching his own wounds close. After a botched attempt by Carlos and some of the Kilo Streeters, he couldn’t trust anyone else other than a board certified doctor to do anything other than some very basic first aid. In the past few months he had gotten really good at it too. Some of the Kilo Streeters stepped up and started fighting themselves. He ended up with a lot of practise.

Harry grunted, surprised to find tears standing in his eyes. Angrily, he dashed them away with the back of his hand.

She chuckled. “Awww my little needle gun is too much for the Bulldog?”

His eyes snapped up to meet Alvia’s silvery green ones. Irritation made his lips curl. Even knowing his buttons were deliberately pushed, he couldn’t help himself. “Are you fucking done?” he demanded, heedless that she had a gun full of needles poised over his heart. 

She laughed and ran her cloth over his chest once more. “All right.” Straightening, she put her tattoo gun aside. 

Alvia’s set up today was a little different from the usual one she used on humans. But this was exactly why Harry wanted Alvia to tattoo this piece. The disposable needles set in the gun were of a finer bore, but there were more of them. Eighty needles bunched tightly together, arrayed in three deep rectangular formation, not unlike the centuries of turian military of old. This particular set up was typically used during a turian’s passing out ceremony when they had completed boot camp — marking a turian’s passage from child to full citizen. She had to modify the gun so it didn’t pierce quite so deeply. A human dermis was no match for a turian carapace after all. Though it meant hurting more during the process, the tattoo would be richer, more clean edged and lasted longer. 

_This_ tattoo warranted it. 

He braced himself off the table and felt the tingling sensation spread across his chest. Walking towards a mirror, he stared at Alvia’s work. “Elizabeth” splashed over his heart, nestled among the petals of a white chrysanthemum, cradling his mother’s name the way she would hold him when he was a child. He couldn’t do that for her when she was alive, he could only contend himself with carrying her name on his skin. His throat tightened and a lump formed, he took a shuddering breath and his gaze drifted. 

A year of fighting had changed his body. Harry collected a lot more scars and a few new tattoos. A bulldog adorned his left inner bicep, a quote ran under his lower collarbone in stylised font, low enough it wouldn’t be visible when he wore his school uniform or rugby jersey. It read “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up”. The quote felt apt.

Beyond that, he started training his body in a way he hadn’t before. He wanted to move faster, to hit harder, to make sure he would never lose. Rugby was the excuse, the fights in the Ring was the real reason to work hard at it. 

Alvia tossed him a small jar. Harry caught it out of the air. He shot her a look. She jerked her chin at the jar. It was a jar of medi-gel, no doubt for his new tattoo. Dipping a finger into the jar, he spread a liberal coat of it. It took the sting out of it. 

“You’re fighting tonight?” she asked, grabbing at her supplies to dress the tattoo. 

Harry nodded, capping the jar and pocketing it. She gestured for him to raise his arms, and he complied. A white bandage covered his tattoo, and it was followed by a clear plastic wrap winding around his chest. “There, done,” she said. “Don’t ruin my work by getting all fucked up tonight.”

He snorted. “I don’t intend to lose.”

She shrugged. “That’s what everyone says. Who expects to lose? That’s twenty-five thousand credits.”

Without batting an eye, he handed Alvia a credit chit and pulled on his white button down shirt and shrugged on his blazer. She swiped the chit over her terminal, and it chimed. Handing it back to him, she stared. Silver-green eyes raked over his body. “I have to say, you’re a very attractive male specimen of your species. If you ever want a little something special, let me know.” 

A wry smile tugged at his lips. He had gotten his fair share of offers from aliens since he frequented Rakuen. Shaking his head, he reached up and cupped Alvia’s mandible, running a finger along the edge of her jaw. “Unfortunately, I don’t swing that way.”

“Alas,” Alvia replied with exaggerated disappointment. “Stick to your boring humans then, Bulldog.”

Harry chuckled and headed out, his chest as sore as his heart felt. Today’s fight would be dedicated to his mother, and he wasn’t going to let her down. 

* * *

Harry stepped off the Ring. Seng tossed him a towel and grinned. "Good job."

He wiped the perspiration from his face. Glancing at the bandage, it held up well in the fight. The dressing probably needed to be changed out, but he could take care of it when he got back. His skin crawled. It was that familiar sensation again. The scrutiny had increased in recent months. With his towel obscuring his face, he studied the crowd. There at the farthest end stood Viper, or the man he had come to associate with the Vipers. He was staring openly. 

Their eyes met. For a while Harry felt disturbed by the continuous interest from the man, but yet intrigued by his scrutiny. Then, Viper jerked his head towards the Stage and disappeared among the crowd. Harry blinked. Now that was new. 

"How much?" Harry asked, putting the oddity out of his mind as he shrugged into his hoodie. 

"10,000 credits," Seng replied, "each."

Harry sighed. Seng looked happy enough, handing off the betting chits to Carlos so that he could go get them exchanged into credit chits. In the past year, he wasn't the only one who had changed. The Kilo Streeters had grown prosperous. Their influence had expanded, and they had been indulging in their newfound status. 

But with winning came other less desirable changes. Their odds weren't as great as they were when Harry first started. Harry's bets on himself nabbed him less and less with each win. He couldn't help but feel he was being punished for being good at something. Sure, there was the winning bonus to consider, still it didn't beat a 50 to 1 odds on a win. 

"Hey, I see you've got a new tattoo," Ralph remarked, stabbing a finger in Harry's direction. "Did you finally get a Kilo Streeter sign? About time, Bulldog."

Harry glared at him. For whatever reason, Ralph always rubbed him the wrong way. "No, why would I?"

"You're one of us," Ralph insisted, he sucked on his cig and exhaled, blowing the smoking into Harry's face. 

He growled and waved his hand through the smoke. "I'm not one of you," he reminded Ralph. 

This, also, was another point of contention. Kilo Streeters considered him one of them, but to Harry this had always been a partnership of mutual gain. He had no obligation to them. They didn't hang out, they weren't friends, at best they were business partners.

"Leave him be," Seng said. "He won, we got credits, what does it matter? He's one of us in his heart and that's good enough."

Harry rolled his eyes and grabbed his bag. Carlos returned and handed out chits to everyone. Tapping it against his omni-tool, Harry checked his. The number popped up on his screen, after making some mental calculations, he nodded and pocketed the chit. This one would go into the box with the rest. As much as he'd prefer to deposit them into a regular bank account, he didn't want it to be flagged by his father. Far better he kept his tiny fortune in chits. 

"All right, I'm off," Harry declared. 

"What you're not watching Ralph's fight?" Carlos asked. "It's his first fight. Thought you'd want to watch him get his teeth knocked out." He laughed while Ralph threw a punch at him. 

Harry snorted. It was tempting, but it was also a waste of time. Seng stopped him. "Maybe you have a little advice for him?"

Harry looked at Ralph. He recognised the anxiety, the fear, the first fight jitters, but he also remembered Ralph had been an annoying asshole right from the first moment they met. His on again and off again relationship with May notwithstanding, Ralph always needed to prove he had the bigger dick in every interaction they had. 

"I don't need his fucking advice. I've trained," Ralph pointed out, stripping out of his own shirt. If he hadn't flexed his arm in April's direction, Harry would wonder if all this friction between them might have been Ralph trying to come onto him. Maybe it still fucking was. He shrugged mentally. 

"Just remember to duck." Harry tossed his advice over his shoulder as he left, wading through the crowd. 

Whispers followed him. “It's the Bulldog,” a turian pointed out, mandibles flapping in his direction. 

Harry slipped between two asaris. “If you want to learn how to fight, watch him,” one of them hissed. “He fights dirty.” 

He couldn’t help the smile tugging at his lips. “The Bulldog is stubborn for a human fighter,” a krogan rumbled almost approvingly. 

If nothing else, these had helped stroke his ego. Harry figured he deserved it. He worked hard to get here, he might as well enjoy it. 

There was only one entrance and exit to Rakuen, and that was past the Stage. Harry liked lingering there. The acts always had something strange, new, surprising or all of the above. 

Today, a pair of quarians were on stage. Their suits had various switches stuck to the surface. He squinted as he pushed forward. The switches were of different shapes and sizes, but if Harry had to describe them, he’d say they looked like light switches he had seen used in heritage protected Earth homes. And these switches weren’t only on their suits, but an array of them were also affixed on a panel in front of the quarians.

“But these can’t be light switches right?” 

Nobody had an answer for him. One of the quarians cleared his throat, the sound came through various speakers that dotted the Stage. “For our performance, we’d require everyone to disable their translator. This is supposed to be appreciated in its rawest form. Also be warned, there will be flashing lights.” 

He stepped away and the lights dimmed immediately, obscuring the pair. A familiar orange glow pierced the dark, one Harry recognised coming from an omni-tool. Then, a heavy beat thumped, its volume loud enough he felt it in his chest. Electronic beeps and boops weaved between the beats. The pair danced silhouetted against the flickering lights that synced up to the music. Their fingers ran over their suits and the panel set out before them. With each flick of a switch, there was an audible click. It didn’t just controll the lights and the music, but the clicking was a third level upon the beat and the electronic sounds. 

Their masks almost seemed to glow from within, a pair of eyes seemingly floated against a sea of dark. When the music shifted, their masks changed as well, going from bright neon to what could only be considered emojis though in configuration Harry hadn’t seen before. The stage lights grew brighter each time it cut in and out. He spotted a third figure approaching from the back. When the lights snapped on for good, a turian stood bare chested between the quarian pair. The music rose to a crescendo and cut to an abrupt silence. 

For a while, Harry wondered if that was the end of the performance. The turian with his mandibles stretched wide, sang — if he could call it that. Guttural growls and sharp keening poured from the turian’s mouth. His voice reverberated throughout Rakuen, blasting out through the speakers, almost overwhelming them. Harry and the rest of the audience flinched back as one. Though most of them were visibly wincing, nobody stepped away, everyone watched in rapt silence. 

By the time the intermission came, his ears were ringing. All that was left was a buzzing that refused to go away. Conversations around him sounded like it came through a thick layer of sponge, muffled and far away, but judging by how wide everyone’s months were, they were shouting at each other. He couldn’t blame them, he could barely hear himself think. This had been a huge mistake.

A countdown, indicating how long the intermission was going to last, and a short message flashed on the back pane of the stage. 

> The nar Troni twins and Laenus
> 
> The fusion quarian electronica and traditional turian singing act will be back in 14 standard minutes.

Harry shuddered and turned away. His ears wouldn’t be able to take another fifteen minutes of this. As he pushed and shoved his way towards the exit, he felt a tap on his shoulder and an arm around his. The arm dragged him towards the side, so that they slipped out of the constant stream of people. It was only a testament to the press of people that Harry couldn’t jerk his arm out of the person’s grip right away. When they came to a pocket of empty space, he whirled around, ready to feed the person his fist. 

Harry froze. It was Viper. “What the fuck do you want?” 

This was the first time Harry got a good look at the man. Viper was dressed in a three-piece suit, dress shirt, vest and blazer. Silver modded hair swept up in a well coiffed little puff — like a fucking cloud — on the top of his head. Rings adorned his fingers, one on each hand, but that wasn’t what caught Harry’s attention. In a well worn brown leather band around his left wrist, what looked like a plain old watch adorned his wrist, but Harry knew better. A white dial encased in a gold case and classically designed hour markers laid out around the dial. His eyes widened as he recognised the watch. This was a fucking vintage Omega Constellation. 

Viper was either very new and stupid — which Harry knew he wasn’t — or very confident in his ability to keep himself safe. And if he was willing to wear something so rare and expensive that it held the value of several skycars on his wrist, Harry had to tread with care. 

The man smiled when he noticed Harry noticing. Tugging a sleeve over his wrist, motive achieved, he gestured towards the exit. Despite Harry’s earlier annoyance at the way Viper got his attention, which Harry put down to his buzzing ears, his curiosity was piqued. He followed. 

The ride up was done in complete silence, buzzing ears not withstanding. Harry’s ears popped and his hearing returned. What did Viper wanted with him anyway? He was rich, more than rich, stinking fucking rich more like. This fucker couldn’t be here for anything beyond kicks. Harry recognised his family was well to do, but he personally wasn’t rich. Maybe Viper in a similar situation? This had been the culmination of months of observation after all. Harry welcomed it, even if it was to rid himself of this odd one sided relationship with Viper. 

Instead of stopping at the ground level, the elevator continued up towards the actual skycar parking levels. Harry stiffened, his guard was up. “Where are you taking me?” he asked. 

“You’d find out soon,” Viper replied, looking almost smug. 

The elevators opened. The level looked completely empty. Blue light strips lined the perimeter and the ceiling of the cavernous space. The way the lights were placed, it rendered the entire space without shadows. The effect was disconcerting. Harry took two steps out of the elevator and stopped. 

"What the fuck are we doing here?" he demanded. His heckles were raised. "What do you want with me?"

"Bulldog, I didn't take you for such a scaredy cat," Viper chuckled. He whistled. The sound, sharp and piercing, echoed across the space. 

Just a couple of metres away ahead of them, the air shimmered. Harry squinted and wondered if he had taken a blow to the head and not realised it. Giggles erupted from that spot, and the shimmering air fell away to reveal more people — specifically a salarian, a turian and another human man. 

"Told you he'd fall for it," the salarian laughed, high pitched and slightly wheezy. “John, these panels are genius!"

John, the artist formerly known as Viper, laughed. "That's Oxo, the one that's laughing her ass off," he said as Oxo waved, dismantling what looked like a reflective shield into smaller parts. 

"I'm Varso," the turian said, his bright blue eyes raking over Harry predatorily. 

"Are you fucking kids?" the last man asked with his arms folded across his chest, rolling his eyes at the others. 

John pointed at him. "Don't mind Anson, his bark is harsher than his bite."

Harry stared at the group, still bewildered why he was brought here. Yeah, sure these are faces he had seen in and around Rakuen in the passing, but there was nothing to suggest he wasn't in danger, or why he was brought here. As he cursed himself inwardly for his foolishness — curiosity killed the cat and all fucking that — he made sure he kept his distance from them. The elevator was just behind, he could just turn and go. As long as there wasn't a biotic among them, he'd be able to get the doors closed before they could reach him. 

"Come on, John," Oxo said. "Don't tell me you haven't told the Bulldog why you brought him here? He looks like he is ready to bolt."

"I bet he was doing his whole mysterious man shtick again," Anson groaned. 

Harry glared at Viper — John, whatever the fuck his name was. He was pretty sure all the names they had just told him weren't their real ones either. These people weren't the usual run of the mill gangs. Not with fucking vintage Omega watches or playing around a tactical panel, he didn't know enough about salarian or turian fashion, but Harry would bet that those weren't cheap either. 

"What the fuck do you want with me?" Harry demanded as much as he was curious, his patience had frayed. 

John turned and smiled. "We," he gestured at the rest, "would like to invite you to join us."

"Join you?" Harry parroted back. "What exactly do you do?"

"Oh we dabble in a little bit of this," Varso said. 

"And a bit of that," Oxo completed. 

Anson sighed. "You guys are doing an excellent job of selling this." He stepped forward, pushing past John. "So here's the thing. We like how you fight. We want you to join us and fight for us."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "What can you offer me that I can't get now?"

Oxo snorted. "For one thing, our plans go beyond the Ring."

Anson shot her a look. “Yes, the Ring is but the start. We front you, you fight for us. You don't need to risk any credits of your own, we can pour more credits into you then you can pull on your own."

"We know, we've checked," Varso piped up, stepping up closer. 

"Think of it this way, we look out for one of our own," John concluded. 

Harry's head began to hurt. With the four of them trading words between them like a ping pong ball, it was frustrating, but to say he wasn't interested would be lying. 

"Come on, you don't have to decide now," Viper said gesturing at the others. They stepped back into the elevator, and it descended. "You can think about it. Don't take too long though, we have plans and our plans have more plans." 

Harry planted himself nearest to the door. What if this was all somehow a ploy of a different kind? The Ring had no shortage of good fighters. He was good, but he wasn't the best. He wasn't quite so prideful to ever think _that_. Fighting was only a means to an end. His end goal was credits, he wasn't too fussed about how he got it. What truly intrigued him were their plans. There was only so far he could go fighting in the Ring. The Vipers were clearly on a whole different level than the Kilo Streeters, maybe...

The elevator jerked to a stop, and the doors opened. Harry stepped out, his mind still churning. Shadows clung to the corners of the street, the few street lights barely lit up the place. The night was still young, young enough that most were still hanging out in Rakuen. He hesitated. A question poised on his tongue. 

“How do I get in touch?" he asked. 

John grinned, all smug and knowing. Instead of replying, he swiped on his omni-tool and Harry's omni-tool made a buzz. An address appeared. He tapped and it launched the map. The Utsaah popped up as the location. He stared at the Vipers. Before he could press for the relationship between them and Utsaah, a voice called out, "Bulldog!"

Harry whirled to find Seng striding towards him. He looked angry. Oxo chuckled. "Uh oh."

"All right, you know how to find us, we'll leave you to your heart to heart with—" Anson's lip curled in disgust "—him."

"What the fuck are you doing with Viper, Bulldog? You better have a good explanation!" Seng continued as he came swinging at Harry. 

Harry sighed and couldn't decide if this was the worst day of his life or the best as he ducked out of the way of Seng's fist.

* * *

Harry stared at the front of the classroom, Harris’ voice droned on and on about this mathematical formula or something else. He wasn’t paying attention. The class was boring. If only he could just skip it. Checking his attendance record, it had been abysmal recently. Well, he had been really diligent at the Ring and training recently. So that was probably why. 

School acted like his down time now, with the fights being his full time job. The last he checked his little stash, it was substantial now. Enough for a year’s rent in a decent neighbourhood on Tamayo Point. But it wouldn’t fund a university education, room and board for a standard university education of four years. His father — probably his new fuck buddy assistant really, the names kept changing every six month, he no longer paid attention — sent him a new mail just a couple of days ago. The message was clear and concise. Pick from one of three universities — all of them in as far-flung a colony worlds as one could get from the Citadel — and make sure he got a grade good enough to pass in these three courses of studies. Harry had looked through them. All of them as good as guaranteed a career in the diplomatic corps. It felt like nothing but a shortening of his leash. The mail only pissed him off. 

His omni-tool buzzed, yanking his attention out of his thoughts. It was another mail from, Harry narrowed his eyes, June. What the hell was she? Harry blinked. The name wasn’t ringing a bell. Maybe the content would jog his memory. 

> Hey handsome, can we meet tonight?

It was followed by a whole string of emojis, mostly of eggplants and peaches. _Oh._ He remembered now. June, that was the girl he brought home last night. Rolling his eyes, he sighed. Another one of those. Casual sex for Harry was just that, casual. No feelings involved, a purely physical transaction. Everyone got to have a good time. That was it. Well, apparently _June_ didn't get the message. His fingers flew across his omni-tool as he typed out a quick reply. 

> Sure. But remember this is just sex. 

A reply came buzzing back in a couple of seconds. 

> Whatever you say lover boy. See you tonight. 

Harry bit back a groan. He would have to ghost her sooner rather than later if this went on. 

"All right, don't forget to turn in your assignments!" Harris said as everyone's omni-tools buzzed, signalling the end of the lesson. 

Harry sighed. He couldn't wait to get out of here. Dropping off his room for a brief moment to change out of his uniform, he donned his black hoodie and sweatpants and laced on a pair of black high tops. Now he had to get to work. 

The first stop was the Utssah. Khathe nodded at him as he entered. Glancing at the club, patrons were dancing and drinking their night away, enjoying what little escape music and alcohol provided. Harry leaned against the bar. 

"The usual?" Khathe asked. 

He nodded. She bent to retrieve a bottle from under the counter. With a flick of her hand, the bottle slid right into his hand. Harry popped the cap and drank deep. Sparkling water, fizzy and bitter, just the way he liked it. No biyara for him before a fight. Bracing his elbows against the bar, he watched Khathe worked. Two pairs of eyes allowed her to keep her eye — pun fully intended — on things easily. The brewing situation between a couple of krogans in the corner, the drunken human stumbling into the dance floor and of course Harry who was watching her. 

Khathe sighed and spoke into her omni-tool, sending the bouncers to take care of the krogans and humans. Then, she turned her full attention on Harry. "What?"

“So…” Harry started.

She blinked all four eyes at him and waited. “So?”

“Were you ever going to tell me? Or am I supposed to figure that out when I fumble my way trying to look for the Vipers?”

Khathe snorted, nostrils opening and closing in amusement. "Well for one thing, John is merely the front person for the Vipers so that it's easier for the rest of us to disappear into the background. I am just the other end of the business. And now you're one of us."

Harry tipped his bottle at her. To say his transition between the Kilo Streeters and the Vipers was messy would be an understatement. Seng fought him in the street that day, screaming for an explanation like he was some jilted lover. Not a single one of the girls he slept with reacted this way and here this man-boy-child person demanded an explanation. Harry didn’t owe him shit. His mind was already made up in truth when he asked John how to contact him. It just took the rest of his body to figure it out while ducking from Seng’s wild punches. 

And John delivered what he promised. They poured more credits into the bets. As long as he won, his winnings was substantially more. But there was a catch. Harry wouldn't see his credits until the end of the year because that was part of the deal. The credits were collectively re-invested into the betting, among other things. They could see a profit the likes of which they couldn't get from the Ring. Why the entire roundabout deal with the credits going from one thing to the next he couldn't say, but he had thrown his lot in with the Vipers. Having seen the way John and the others behaved, the things they owned, that certainly spoke of itself. 

"So where's John?" Harry asked. "He told me to meet him here today."

Khathe shrugged. That was when the door slid open, and John entered. Instead of walking over to the bar, he gestured for Harry come outside. Harry finished the rest of his bottle and waved goodbye to Khathe. 

Once outside, he saw the others were all dressed plainly, at odds with how they usually flashed their status. "It's pay day," John said. 

Harry’s gaze snapped up to meet John’s. John had always been secretive about his outside plans, and this was the first he had heard of something special being the works. He wondered if the others had a similar treatment, or it was only for the new guy. Keeping his mouth shut, he waited to see what other gems were going to fall from John's mouth.

“The shipment is coming in today. Once we get rid of the goods, we'll have enough to sit tight for a long while. And we can relax and have nothing but some fun little fights."

John turned to Harry, levelling a finger at him. "And you can get your first payout. I bet you're eager to get it. Our investments are ready to be cashed out really, really soon."

Harry liked the sound of it. "How much are we talking about? Half a million credits?"

Oxo snorted. "Think bigger."

"A million?"

John chuckled as Oxo walked up next to him and tilted her omni-tool to show him. "Six—"

"Shhh..." She clamped her hand over his mouth. "Remember, it’s split six ways, but still plenty to go around. What is it that you humans say?" she cocked her head trying to remember. "Ahh... Don't count your baby birds till they break free."

"Something like that?" Anson replied. "Come on, let's go. We don't want to give our partners a bad impression after all." He didn't wait and taped on his omni-tool. The skycar parked beside him roared to life, and its doors popped open. 

John did the same and a second car's doors popped open. "Bulldog, with me."

With an excitement he hadn't since his first couple months of fights, he climbed into John's skycar. His pulse filled his ears in a good way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!


	4. Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bulldog!” Seng screamed. 
> 
> Blood drained from Harry’s face. Cold sweat broke across his brow. This wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to fucking happen! A snarl curled Seng’s lips as he rushed in. The orange glow of a flash forged omni-blade splashed across his face, he looked every bit like a crazy person. Harry backed away, stumbling as he went. 
> 
> “You’ll pay for double crossing me!” Seng roared. “Fight, you fucker!”
> 
> Shouts rang out in the warehouse, bouncing everywhere, making it impossible to tell who was who, and where they were coming from. Harry gritted his teeth. This wasn’t like a fight in the Ring. There were rules there, here there were none. 
> 
> “You lost the last time, don’t make things worse,” Harry reminded, glancing over his shoulder. making sure he wasn’t backing himself into a corner. 
> 
> Oxo’s high pitched nasal voice rang out. Harry’s heart clenched. Had she been killed? Was this how it was all going to end? John’s voice echoed somewhere behind him. Harry caught a glimpse of the skycars. One of them smoking and on fucking fire. Where were Anson or Varso? This had been a mistake, a big fucking mistake. 
> 
> _Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. 
> 
> Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/).

His pulse throbbed against his temples. His breath came hard and fast as his lungs laboured to keep up. Pain flashed up against his side. Had he been stabbed? Harry couldn’t tell anymore. Eyes darting around, he tried to see where the skycars were. Whatever the fuck was in the crates didn’t seemed worth it anymore, not at the cost of his fucking life. 

“Bulldog!” Seng screamed. 

Blood drained from Harry’s face. Cold sweat broke across his brow. This wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to fucking happen! A snarl curled Seng’s lips as he rushed in. The orange glow of a flash forged omni-blade splashed across his face, he looked every bit like a crazy person. Harry backed away, stumbling as he went. 

“You’ll pay for double crossing me!” Seng roared. “Fight, you fucker!”

Shouts rang out in the warehouse, bouncing everywhere, making it impossible to tell who was who, and where they were coming from. Harry gritted his teeth. This wasn’t like a fight in the Ring. There were rules there, here there were none. 

“You lost the last time, don’t make things worse,” Harry reminded, glancing over his shoulder. making sure he wasn’t backing himself into a corner. 

Oxo’s high pitched nasal voice rang out. Harry’s heart clenched. Had she been killed? Was this how it was all going to end? John’s voice echoed somewhere behind him. Harry caught a glimpse of the skycars. One of them smoking and on fucking fire. Where were Anson or Varso? This had been a mistake, a big fucking mistake. 

_Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!_

Harry wasn’t one easily frazzled. Despite all of his seventeen years, he had seen some shit — shit that he typically started himself — but shit nonetheless. However, there were different levels to shit. There was shit that he could get himself out of, shit his parents’ influence and credits could get him out of. This — Seng swinging his omni-blade at him — was different. Harry couldn’t talk his way out of this. They were way beyond words. He flinched and crashed into some debris on the ground, slicing a long cut up his arm. 

Seng laughed. He fucking laughed. If Harry wasn’t scared, mouth dry, palms sweaty fucking scared shitless, he’d be pissed. “Not so tough are you now huh, Bull-dog?”

No, he was not. He had to get to the skycars. Seng and the rest of the Kilo Streeters were between him and his target. All of them were locked in their own battles. He wasn’t going to have help. He couldn’t yield and walk away from it. This was gangland warfare. 

“Get the crate!” John shouted, his voice echoing. “We’re not leaving without it!”

Harry didn’t come here to die. He didn’t do all this to fucking die. The fights, the betting, the switching of sides, all of it was to live — to truly breathe. But this…

“I am not dying over this!” Varso growled. “I am not letting these lowlives get me!”

Harry clenched and unclenched his fists, inching ever closing to the others. He didn’t come here to be killed. He refused to. The roar of a skycar powering up rattled the warehouse.

“Let’s fucking go!” Anson said, his voice laboured and thin. “Oxo is not looking good. She needs help.”

Harry didn’t think he could feel any more frightened. If he was scared before, he was on the brink of panic now. John and the others were going to leave him. A pawn, a stupid grunt, that was all he was to them. He gritted his teeth against the flash of pain as he shuffled towards the skycar. He wasn’t going to let them fuck him over. 

With a swipe of his finger across his omni-tool — he gasped as he realised he smeared blood across the haptic screen — an omni-blade flared to life in seconds. One that matched Seng’s, like for like. Omni-blade mods were illegal in most colonies and space stations but since when had that stopped a kid with too much credits to burn before. Seng grinned. “Let’s do this!”

Time slowed. The patter of rain outside dulled. Harry breathed, his ribs expanded, his lungs filled. Then, he moved. Twisting his side — ignore the pain, ignore it — he danced around Seng’s straight jab. Harry struck with his blade. Seng stepped back. Harry’s eyes widened. Seng had learnt for his time in the Ring, he had improved. 

Teeth gritted, Harry was determined not to let this get the better of him. He wasn’t about to give up. He was the fucking better fighter here. Taking two quick steps, he forced Seng back. Seng stumbled, caught off guard by Harry’s onslaught. Debris fouled Seng’s balance, his hands spread wide as he tried to keep from falling. There, his pinky. Harry made a grab for it, twisting it back on itself. All it took was a little pressure at the right spot. A bone could only bend so far. It snapped. Physics and biology working in concert. Seng howled. Harry couldn’t afford to let his guard down, not yet. Yielding wasn’t an option, he had to disable Seng. The nose was a fragile thing. It stuck out of a face, making it a tempting target. With Seng on his bent over and him standing, Harry stuck down as hard as he could. At least this way it wouldn’t be fatal. Bone impacted against bone. Seng went down hard, stunned. 

Break or no break, this was good enough for Harry’s purposes. He heard skycar doors slamming shut. Fuck. Harry ran. As his thighs powered through the space, he spotted one of the crates. That was the fucking thing they came here and bled for. Deactivating his omni-blade, the flash forged omni-gel broke off and fell to the ground. He grabbed the crate, tucking it against his hip and ran. “Hey!” Every step he took jostled the corner of the crate against his side. The pain felt like knives ramming into his body. “Wait!”

One of the doors popped open. Varso was there, hand reaching out for him — maybe for the crate. Harry couldn’t trust any of them, not anymore. But right now, they were his ride out. Harry lunged and made it half into the car as it started to take off. The car, off balanced, started to tilt. Harry was slipping off. He had half the presence of mind to wrap one wrist around the safety belt while the other held onto the fucking crate in a white knuckled grip. Varso grabbed him by the band of his sweatpants and hauled him inside, slamming the door shut. 

“You saved the whole fucking day, Bulldog!” Viper shouted. 

Harry looked at his hands. They were blood smeared, not just red but blue and a whole lot of green. Shit. Oxo…

* * *

Harry figured his pulse would have returned to normal once his life wasn't imminently in danger. But he realised having someone he considered a teammate bleeding out all over his lap wasn't conducive to calm at all. 

"Press harder!" he growled. 

"I'm trying!" Varso snapped. 

Oxo screamed, and Varso immediately let go again. If Harry hadn't already had his hands full, he'd be tempted to strangle Varso. "Do not fucking let go!" 

“But—”

"Do you want her to die?" Harry shouted. His eyes met Varso's. "Keep your fucking hands where I fucking tell you, and press hard. I don't care if she screams. If she has to breathe to scream, it means she is not actually dying."

Varso cowed, did as he was told. Harry renewed his efforts despite Oxo's attempts to buck off their laps and end up on the floor of the skycar. "Please," she whimpered. 

This time, Varso didn't remove his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Harry didn't actually know what he was doing. All he had was information he learnt while down in rabbit holes he went down. And that was when he was researching how to fight better, how to treat his own wounds. Reading about salarian or turian anatomy in the passing didn't make him a doctor, it didn't even make him a medical student. Stemming the bleeding, putting pressure wounds to do that, might not be the sum total of his knowledge, but it was butting up the upper limit of it. 

Oxo grunted but seemed to have mastered her pain. Varso looked at him, seeking instructions. Harry had nothing for himself let alone Varso, but he forced his features to betray nothing. Far better Varso thought Harry knew what the fuck he was doing than to have Oxo go into a panic.

“Just keep the pressure on. I don’t suppose we have a med-kit in the car?” Varso shook his head. Harry grimaced and glanced around. “Where the hell are we going? She needs a fucking doctor.”

“We're not going to the hospital,” Oxo rasped. 

“What?” Harry couldn't believe his ears. “Why not?”

"If we go to the hospital, they'd call the police. We can't get them involved," she explained like he was a particularly slow child. Maybe by salarian standards he was. 

"Varso?" Harry called out. "Are you hearing this? I don't know what's wrong with her? She may die."

Varso ducked his head and just kept pressure against Oxo's side. The greenish blood had stopped dripping into the plush carpet that lined the skycar. Harry sighed and kicked out against the back of John’s seat. "Anson, John? What the fuck? Can't your parents smooth this over? This is life or death!"

Nobody spoke. Anson continued driving further and further away from the hospital. They were heading back to Kilo Ward. John twisted around in his seat and looked at Oxo. "This is your choice."

Oxo blinked. Big black orbs reflected the lights from the skyscrapers they passed. Her eyelids flickered opened and closed, her blue colouration turned a little ashen. "We got the goods, we have to try."

Harry would have gotten out of the skycar if they weren't also high off the ground. They were mad, that was the only explanation he could think of. 

"I am not stupid," Oxo said, her gaze directed at him. "I don't want to die either. But I am not bleeding out. I just need... some painkillers. And a little first aid."

"I am not a fucking doctor," Harry snapped. 

"That much I can tell," Oxo retorted. "But I am a med student, you'd just be my hands."

Harry exhaled and gritted his teeth, keeping all the expletives to himself. Cursing as much as it might relief some pressure, it wouldn't fucking help. For better or worse, he was going to have to see this through. 

The skycar parking complex came into view as Anson made a sharp turn out of the lane. The VI on the dashboard beeped and announced, “A fine of 10,000 credits for reckless driving has been sent to driver—”

John swiped a finger over his omni-tool and paid the ticket. Instead of allowing the parking drone to take the car in, Anson drove in. The skycar powered down, and the doors opened. Everyone — those who are able — poured out. 

This was the same wide space John had brought Harry to when he first recruited him. It had been turned into a little club house of sorts. The tactical panels were long gone, instead there were what looked like cast away furnitures from Brillantmont — in short, they were completely functional but just ever so slightly scuffed up. A couple of sofa were arranged haphazardly between three arm chairs. A long table, typically found in the student cafeteria, dominated the middle. Various terminals and mods were littered across it. The few times Harry had actually been here, he saw Anson and Viper tinkering with what looked like illegal omni-tool mods on the table. The rest of the room was filled out with a huge fridge, a vintage pinball machine and various sundries. 

“Clear the fucking table!” Harry shouted. 

He had gone through with Oxo. He knew what he needed to do _in theory_ , but he had never actually done it before, let alone on an alien. Would he get her sick? Or would helping her get _him_ sick? His research had never taken him this far. There was no time to waste now. 

As Harry carried Oxo out of the car, a salarian surprisingly light for someone of her height, the crashing of mods and terminals rang out. Anson had spread a sheet over the table and Varso had gone to retrieve the dinky little first aid kit they had. John seemed to be rummaging around the skycar. Harry didn’t care what he was up to, he had fucking work to do. 

* * *

Harry stepped back, his back thumped against the fridge. He had to brace himself against it to keep from falling, no doubt leaving a smear of green blood in its wake. It was done. Somehow, some-fucking-how, he had managed to stick his fingers into Oxo’s side and found the artery that had been gleefully dumping blood everywhere and seared it shut using the medi-laser. On top of that, he had successfully stitched the wound shut. The row of crosses were terrible and messy, but under the circumstances as long as Oxo didn’t actually die, he counted it as a win. Varso carried her and gently put her on one of the sofas. She was out like a light after she had taken what useless painkillers they had. 

The others weren’t in any better shape. All of them were dead on their feet. Anson had collapsed into one of the armchairs holding one arm against his chest, a nasty burnt mark seared into his skin. Varso slumped onto the floor, his back against the sofa Oxo laid in. Parts of his clothes were scorched, blue blood crusted against his mandible like someone nicked his carapace in an omni-blade. Harry sighed and forced himself to stand. He rummaged around the first aid kit and found two more packets of medi-gel. It took far less time to clean and apply medi-gel on their wounds. He left them to handle the dressing themselves. 

Then, and only then, John reappeared from the back of the skycar. He held up the crate. “Bulldog, you’re our saviour!” 

Varso shot him a look, jerking his head indicating the sleeping Oxo. John winced and tip-toed with exaggerated care back to the others. He wrapped an arm around Harry’s neck and drew him close. Harry was too exhausted to put up a fight and allowed John to press his lips against his face. Internally, Harry pictured punching John square on the nose. 

“All is not lost. I’ve counted the merchandise. We have roughly half of what we were supposed to receive. If I run my numbers right, we have enough to recoup our losses.”

Harry shook his head, trying to shove his exhaustion away so that he could pay attention. Walking around the blood stained table to the crate, he peered into it, and his heart sank. 

“I say we sell it. We’ll just keep a few pieces,” John went on. “And then we serve the Kilo Streeters a little payback.” A chorus of tired yeses greeted John. 

“Bulldog,” John called out. “What say you? You know your former crew the best, where the fuck are they? We have to plan our little revenge.” John stood with his hands on his hips, looking at Harry like he was going to agree to what was tantamount to murder. 

Harry ran a hand through his sweat drenched hair, his side throbbed dully, reminding him that he hadn’t taken care of his own wounds yet. His bones weighed a ton, his body was a prison of flesh. He felt like a wrung out piece of rag. But beyond all that, there was also rage bubbling and boiling, like a chemical reaction, slow but inevitable at the same time. 

Add stupidity, short sighted thinking and secrets together. Mix them well. Toss in a dash of exhaustion and frayed nerves and you’d get anger, fury and rage. 

It took all of Harry’s self control not to just shove the crate over and upend the contents across the floor. Oxo was tired. She needed the rest, and he didn’t want to undo all his work with a bit of a temper tantrum on his part. He stalked over to the rest of them and satisfied himself by dropping the crate on the ground. It landed with a thump. With the toe of his boot he tipped it over. Less noisy, but attention grabbing all the same. 

“What the fuck are these?” Harry growled. 

Out spilled a good fifty mods of various shapes and sizes. They were all weapon mods, barrels, grips, magazines — the list went on and on. The others stared at him like he had grown a second head. “This is the merchandise,” Anson said from his position on the arm chair. “What the fuck did you think we went to get? Sugar and cotton candy?”

Varso snorted. “These things are worth a fortune especially once we get our hands on the pistol and sell them fully equipped. Oxo has buyers lined up already.” 

Harry let out a low growl of frustration. He had assumed they were playing with things like illegal omni-tool mods, or maybe even a little low grade red sand, but weapon mods? And what about this talk of revenge and payback? It’s too much. He didn’t sign up for this. Credits were important, but staying out of the eyes of the law was important too. It wouldn’t make sense to go running back to his father for help just because he screwed this shit up. 

“Wait, wait, wait. Bulldog didn’t you know about this?” John asked, staring at him curiously. “Shit, didn’t I tell you what we’re actually doing?”

“No.” The admission galled him. Harry blamed himself more for not asking, for not being careful. 

“This” — John scooped the mods back into the crate. They clinked, metal bits against metal bits as they fell back into the crate as he dropped them — “is what that’s going to make us fucking rich.”

The others nodded and muttered in approval. “Bah, Bulldog, your hands are in as deep as the rest of us. Your winnings and the returns that were promised are all tied up in this. Walk away, you never see a single credit for all the fights you’ve done.”

John lifted his chin at Harry. The sneer was a dare, and it made Harry wished he could put a fist right into John’s mouth, credits or no credits. But Harry forced himself to take a deep breath and nodded. John snorted, like he had won some fight, like Harry was his leashed dog. The thought almost, _almost_ , made Harry’s vision go red. “Right since _that’s_ settled, I propose we lay low for a bit. Rest, recovered and all that shit.” He spared Oxo half a glance before continuing. “Half our supplies were stolen, I dare say we’d want them back. But first we need to move our merchandise and then…” John glanced at the others meaningfully. “Those who dare, win. Right guys?”

Varso nodded, his mandibles tight against his face while Anson lifted a hand up towards John who slapped it. Harry was pointedly left out. 

* * *

Harry staggered back to his room. Thankfully, most of Brillantmont were humping each other in rooms or drinking themselves blind drunk. His hoodie was stuck to his side, dried blood and sweat formed the glue holding it all together. He wasn’t going to risk making the wound worse than it already was. Stripping out of his sweatpants and underwear, no sense in creating a bigger mess to clean up, he stepped into the shower stall. 

The water rained down shockingly cold at first. He flinched and groaned. Pressing his head against the tile, he savoured the cool surface against his fevered skin. Adrenaline had long fled, anger that propped him upright earlier banked, leaving him a hollowed out mess. The water had done the trick. Though his hoodie was heavy with water, he was able to work it off. Standing as naked as the day he was born, he stared at the blood mingling with water dripping down his side and onto the tiles. It became a pinkish mess, swirling around the drainage grate. Gingerly, he felt around his side. 

“Fuck,” he hissed when he fingers found the gash. It flared white hot as clumsy fingers probed it. The gash was as long as his index finger, running along his right side. It raked a path going from his lower abs down towards his groin. He braced a shaking bloody hand against the glass panel as a wave of dizziness swept over him. His chest clenched with a sudden ache for his mother. 

Like the pain, the exhaustion and uncertainty broke something within him, all the questions he didn’t allow himself to think, to consider came rushing out. Filling his mind to the brim, overflowing out through his eyes, out through his throat and his desperate need to see her again. He stumbled backwards and the shower detected that he had left the zone and the water stopped. All that was left was the drip-drip-drip of water flowing in rivulets down his skin, collecting at the ends of his hairs and running down his face and off his chin. His vision blurry from weariness — it wasn’t tears, he wasn’t crying — he stepped out. 

Harry stared at himself in the mirror for a split second. His wound needed stitching, but he didn’t have the energy or the ability to do it now. Grabbing a towel, he wrapped it around himself. Harry made it as far as the bed before he collapsed into it. Sleep took him. In the seconds between consciousness and the oblivion of sleep, he almost felt the fingers of his mother’s ghost cupping his face. Before he could rouse himself to check, sleep yanked him down into oblivion. 

* * *

The next couple of days passed in a haze. The distance between his bed and the toilet was as far as Harry managed after he stitched himself up. His muscles were sore, his bones ached, and he had never felt worse. Not even after fights he lost was it this bad. Drinking water out of his tap and eating what packaged food he had in his room was acceptable for two days when he slept through the entire day. 

When Harry woke the third morning, he knew this couldn’t go on. His mouth felt so dry his saliva evaporated from inside his throat, but his fingers and toes were so cold he didn’t want to leave the cocoon of his blanket. Sitting up with a groan, his head felt so heavy he supported it with his hands. With blurry vision, he stabbed randomly at his omni-tool implant to get the interface to show up, missing a couple of times while he was at it. When it did activate, the orange glow pierced his eyes. “Fuck.” The curse fell out of his lips like a rock he held in his mouth for ages. Blinking hard, his eyes adjusted, and he checked his biometrics panel. 

> Pulse Rate: 100 beats per minute
> 
> Temperature: 39˚c
> 
> Blood Pressure: 120/79
> 
> Respiration Rate: 20 breaths per minute

Harry grimaced. He had done enough research to know the numbers weren’t good. He needed a doctor, possibly a hospital too. Lifting his shirt, he studied the bandage around his side. Faint stains of red seeped through and other than that were the oddly greenish-yellow pus. Coupling these signs with fever meant only one thing, that damn thing was infected. More medi-gel wasn’t going to do the job. 

Harry pushed off from his bed and stumbled into the bathroom. The thought of leaving his home without even brushing his teeth was too much to bear. He mustered enough energy to do that and splash some water on his face. Calling a skycab to Brillantmont took a little more work. By the time he got his ass into the skycab, he was ready to sleep again. 

When Harry arrived, the VI beeped insistently for payment. The noise roused him, and he shuffled into Charité Intergalactic Medical Centre. It didn’t take long before he got forced into a wheelchair and was brought to a private examination room. What happened after felt like a fever dream — hell, it _was_ a fever dream — his clothes were sliced away despite his insistence he could remove them himself, the asari doctor assured him suitable replacements would be provided, and it was imperative not to make his injury worse by attempting acrobatics. 

Thirty minutes later, Harry laid on the cot with IVs of antibiotics and saline trickling into his veins. His modesty — not that he truly had any after being stripped naked and stitched back up again by the doctor — was preserved by a blanket over him. He felt relatively more like a human again. The doctor swept in again. 

“Mr. Patel-Carlyle,” she said brusquely. Harry couldn’t help but bristled at that name. “Are you more with us now?”

“Yes,” he rasped. “I think so.”

She pressed a button behind his head, and the med-scanner swept over him rapidly a couple of times. Humming, she studied the readout. 

  
“I take it I’ve got an infection?” he asked. 

The doctor glanced at him, and her face relaxed a little. “I didn’t figure you Brillantmont types to know which way is up if gravity didn’t help.”

“Fever, chills, and pus. It all adds up.”

“It does,” she replied and fiddled with the IV bags. “The saline took care of your dehydration. The antibiotics are working since you’re a lot more coherent. Once this bag is done, you can be discharged.”

There was a pause. Harry grew uncomfortable being under the very frank gaze of the doctor. In the end, one of her brow ridges rose. “Did you stitch it up yourself?” Harry cleared his throat, trying to think of a plausible reason why he attempted it himself. But she went on, “Not just that one, but the rest too. We had to examine you properly to make sure your fever isn’t the cause of an infection elsewhere on your body.” 

He grimaced, wondering how out of it he was if he didn’t remember that part. Sighing, he admitted, “Yes. I did them myself.”

The doctor smiled. She looked impressed even. “Well, barring the one that’s giving you all this trouble—“ she gestured at his IVs and the room in general “— I’d say you’ve done a very good job. You might want to place the stitches a little tighter together. There is less chance for scarring that way.”

Harry grunted. “I’d keep that in mind.”

The doctor left. He spent the next half an hour dozing until his omni-tool buzzed. Irritably, he glanced at it. It was another call from John. Harry sighed and let it ring itself out. Apparently John’s version of lying low consisted of silence for all of 24 hours and then snapped to constant vid-call requests and messages. Harry wasn’t in a position to care two days ago, hell even now he felt barely ready to take himself back to school.

_I can’t trust John, I can’t trust any of them._

The thought pressed against his mind that day right as they made their escape. They barely made it out with their lives. It worried him. On one hand the payout was tempting, but the risk was high — too fucking high. Harry didn’t sign up to get other people killed or be killed. Fighting in the ring was self contained violence. It was within his control, he wasn’t there to end a person’s life. Sure people lost their teeth, one of them lost their eye, fractured bones, skin slashed, flesh bled. But nobody _died_. 

Even as he lay on his back, wrestling between feeling cowardly for cutting his losses and running and his distaste for unnecessary bloodshed in the chase for credits, he knew in his hearts of hearts he wasn’t going back to the Vipers. He couldn’t trust them. 

Buzz. Harry sighed and checked. Sure enough it was John again. The messages and calls Harry had been ignoring took on an increasingly frenzied tone. Through it all there was not a single word of care or concern about him or his wounds. He hadn’t expected it of them, but they did fucking survive an all out gang knife fight didn’t they? Judging by John’s repeated tries to reach him, Harry guessed his desire to back out wouldn’t go down well. 

Harry wasn’t going to be a part of whatever this shitty little vendetta the Vipers had against the Kilo Streeters. As difficult as it was to make peace losing all those credits, he would have his life. And with his conscience clear, he could return to the Ring and fight. It would be harder without a gang at his back, but he’d be stupid to get involved in another one again. 

His omni-tool buzzed again. This time, blood drained from his face when he checked. It was his father. Harry bolted straight up and winced. Pressing a hand against his wound, he accepted the call, making sure it was audio only. 

“Harry, what trouble have you gotten into?” his father’s crisp voice came through. 

Harry set his jaw immediately. No pleasantries, straight down to business, exactly what he had come to expect from his father. There wasn’t even the attempt to pretend he cared in the slightest. How was it possible for this much emotion to be dragged out of him just two seconds into the conversation. All the old resentment, the bewildered anger surged up his chest and threatened to spew forth. 

“Harry, I’m speaking to you.” Darsh Patel, human diplomat, said. His voice betrayed no emotion, no anger, nothing. It didn’t feel like he was even speaking to his son, just a vaguely underperforming subordinate. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry managed to grit out. 

A pregnant pause stretched across the other end of the line. Harry could picture his father squeezing the bridge of his nose and frowning like he received a particularly badly written report. “Your school has reported you have missed all your lessons for the past two days and have been skipping out on lessons for half your classes this past semester. Let me repeat myself, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”

“I —”

“Your mother has been dead for a year. It’s time you grow up and shape up. She’d be so disappointed in your performance. Do you know how hard it was to get you into Brillantmont? Do you know how expensive it is to keep you there? I’m not made of credits.” His father took a breath and went on without allowing Harry to speak. “Do it for my sake, or for your mother’s sake. Put your head down and get through this. Then you can go on and have a good and successful career in the diplomatic corp on the Citadel or back on Earth. I’ll make sure you can get into the right university course. Harry, I do not want to get another call from your school again until you’ve graduated. Just do me a favour and stay out of trouble. ” 

With that Darsh Patel hung up. Harry slumped back onto the bed drained in a way that felt worse than when he first stumbled into the hospital. 

* * *

Harry’s mind was in a fog when he left the hospital dressed in a set of simple hoodie and sweatpants. This he paid using his little stash of credits. No sense in disappointing his father now when he could feel the leash tightening around his neck, drawing him back to a place he had nothing left, not with his mother dead. And he found himself right back where he started. All that work for more than a year gone in an instant. He had been stupid, overly trusting and more importantly greedy. Blood, sweat and tears meant nothing. With his heart heavy, he shuffled down the street He could take a skycab back to school, he had enough for that at least, and attend class, but he couldn’t find it in himself to do that right then. 

_Tomorrow, I’ll start tomorrow._

His legs led him where they would, and somehow he ended up outside an Alliance recruitment office. With nothing to do and nowhere to be, he stood and watched the recruitment vid. Scenes of soldiers strolling through grassy green worlds, running along the sunny sandy beaches and seemingly having the time of their lives was juxtaposed with scenes of heroic battles and helping out cheering locals, humans and aliens alike. Harry sneered. The thought of risking his life for strangers felt foreign. He had enough trouble dealing with his own shit, he didn’t need to take on another person’s, let alone a whole ass colony’s. 

Harry turned to go, but the next scene caught his attention. A colonist stoically bearing her pain, hand pressed against her gut as the soldiers laboured to get her to safety. A medic was immediately on scene, working to keep the colonist alive. Medi-gel and battlefield dressing was applied liberally, an IV got slapped on and pain medication provided. The colonist smiled serenely with a perfectly made up face complete with lipstick and mascara. “Thank you for saving my life.” She sat up with what looked like a gut shot and kissed the medic who then blushed magnificently. 

The voice over spoke in a commanding voice. “Join the Alliance and make a difference. Get a fully paid for scholarship to a course of study of your choice and be guaranteed of a job after you graduate.” 

Rolling his eyes, Harry started to walk away again when a soldier in Alliance uniform stepped out. “Can I help you kid?”

Harry hesitated. His eyes stared at the screen promising free education and a fulfilling job. “Any choice of study?”

The soldier grinned. Her blonde hair was wrapped in a tight bun, her uniform stiff and straight, she was the model soldier if he had ever seen one. She turned back into her office and emerged quickly with a flyer chip. “The information is all here,” she said as she handed it to him. “But the long and short of it is this. The Alliance is always looking for good soldiers, and they are willing to pay you to join. Combat medics are always a popular route to get an undergraduate degree for pre-medical students. If you’re good, the Alliance will send you to medical school, and then you’d be promoted to work in field hospitals on ships or in colonies.”

Harry stared at the chip in his hand. It was one of those plug in types. He could stick it into his terminal to check out the details. 

“How old are you kid?”

“Old enough,” he snapped, pissed off for being referred to as a kid. 

The soldier rolled her eyes. “Touchy, all right. Good day to you too, sir." She turned to enter the recruitment office. 

With the chip in his hand, he could feel its hard edges, his finger traced the port where it would go into his terminal. It felt like a lifeline of sorts in a way he couldn't explain. "What's your name?"

The soldier turned and faced him, her eyebrows rose up her forehead. There velcroed to her uniform was her name. It read "Herald". She pointed at it just in case it wasn't clear. 

Herald sighed. "All I am trying to say is you can only enlist on your 18th birthday and not one day earlier. If you have more questions, I can field them…” Her words trailed off, and she glanced over his shoulder. 

Harry turned to see Anson striding towards him. A stiff smile plastered across his face. Anson dropped an arm over Harry’s shoulder. “Bulldog! We’ve been looking for you.”

One of the soldier’s brow rose. “Any problems here?”

Anson smiled and shook his head. “No trouble at all. Come on Bulldog, let’s grab a drink.”

Harry didn’t want to make a scene, in front of an Alliance soldier to boot, and allowed himself to be steered into a skycab. All pretence faded the moment the skycar took off. Anson glared at him. “I hope you have answers for us because we got some questions for you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!


	5. Gudang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Utsaah was empty despite the hour. That was Harry’s first sign of trouble. 
> 
> Anson kept a hand on his shoulder and nudged him onwards. Most of the tables and chairs were shoved to the side, leaving only a single table in the middle and some chairs clustered around it. A chair was set apart from the others. And that chair had a plastic tarp underneath it. That was the second sign of trouble. 
> 
> Everyone, except Oxo, stood up instantly when Harry walked in. The looks they shot each other as he approached was the third sign of trouble. 
> 
> Harry steeled himself, he knew what this was. This was an interrogation, and by the looks of it they had already decided on his guilt. 
> 
> “Bulldog,” John greeted like he was some old friend. 
> 
> Harry stopped short of the chair meant for him. His side ached, the analgesic effects already fading. Anson forced him to sit on the chair with John’s help. Their hands pressed on his shoulders so hard that it bowed. 
> 
> “Why didn’t you pick up my calls or answer my messages?” John asked, his voice still sweet but his gaze was hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/). 

Utsaah was empty despite the hour. That was Harry’s first sign of trouble. 

Anson kept a hand on his shoulder and nudged him onwards. Most of the tables and chairs were shoved to the side, leaving only a single table in the middle and some chairs clustered around it. A chair was set apart from the others. And that chair had a plastic tarp underneath it. That was the second sign of trouble. 

Everyone, except Oxo, stood up instantly when Harry walked in. The looks they shot each other as he approached was the third sign of trouble. 

Harry steeled himself, he knew what this was. This was an interrogation, and by the looks of it they had already decided on his guilt. 

“Bulldog,” John greeted like he was some old friend. 

Harry stopped short of the chair meant for him. His side ached, the analgesic effects already fading. Anson forced him to sit on the chair with John’s help. Their hands pressed on his shoulders so hard that it bowed. 

“Why didn’t you pick up my calls or answer my messages?” John asked, his voice still sweet but his gaze was hard. 

“I was sick, alright?” Harry spat already tired of this pretence. “Just spit it out whatever is on your mind.” He lifted his chin and looked at them in turn. “All of your minds.”

Khathe stepped forward. Her nostrils opened and closed in time to her breathing. She couched to put their eyes — her four to his two — level. “How did the Kilo Streeters know about our operation?” 

Harry straightened. “How would I know? I don’t even fucking know what it is my winnings were being invested into.”

Khathe stepped away, no indication if she believed him. Harry shifted and tried to stand only to feel Anson’s fingernails bite into his skin. “Sit,” he whispered, so quiet, so filled with potent. 

“But it was the Kilo Streeters attacking us,” Varso pointed out, his mandibles pressed tight against his face. He trained his eyes on Harry. “How did they know?”

“How indeed,” John drawled, circling around Harry once and stopped to face him. “Someone must have leaked the information.” He spun around to the others. “Was it you?” His finger stabbed in Varso’s direction. Varso flared his mandibles in mock surprise and shook his head. “Was it you then?” His finger shifted to Khathe. Rolling her eyes — all four of them — she didn’t even bother answering him. “What about you?” Anson sighed and replied, “No.” John took a couple of steps away so that he could address all of them. “Does anyone think Oxo is the one who has leaked the information?”

The pit in Harry’s stomach somehow fell, it reached somewhere around his feet and somehow sank deeper. This wasn’t going anywhere good. The Vipers wouldn’t allow him to just walk away if they were on a witch hunt. With his guilt already pre-determined, what more was there to say? All he could do was pray he would survive for this. 

“Then it must have been you then, Bulldog?” 

John stared at him. _All of them_ stared at him. Harry read varying degrees of suspicion and calculating anger in their eyes. 

“I did not say a word because I did not have the slightest fucking clue what was going on.” Harry itched to stand, to leave, to walk out and never look back, but he remembered John’s plans to get pistols to go with the weapon mods they had. Was anyone packing heat? Was everyone packing heat? He wouldn’t be surprised to learn Khathe had a shotgun under her counter all this time. Teeth gritted, Harry growled, “What the fuck do you want with me?”

John smiled, this time it was all fangs and sharp teeth. “What do we want indeed…” He stepped close to Harry. “This for an instance.” John drew back his fist to slam it against Harry’s face, but Harry saw the move from a mile away. Anson’s grip on his shoulder had loosened, no doubt looking forward for Harry to get his face punched in. Twisting out of the way was a simple enough thing to do. John’s fist thumped into the back of Harry’s chair. He pulled his fist back and held it tight against his chest as if his knuckles weren’t merely bruised but broken instead. 

Harry bit down on his lip to keep from laughing. Anson growled a wordless sound of frustration. He shoved John away and loomed over Harry. Taking the corner of Harry’s hoodie in his hands, he slammed Harry back against the chair. “Don’t look so fucking smug. Tell us where the Kilo Streeters’ hideout is and maybe, _maybe_ , we’ll let you crawl out of here alive.” Anson thumped both his fists against Harry’s chest, knocking the wind out of him — though it wasn’t quite so effective as punching in his stomach Harry couldn’t help but note. 

“I did not tell them anything. I’ve not been in contact with any of them since that night. You all were there. You saw,” Harry growled, surging to his feet and slamming his chest into Anson. With a quick turnaround, Harry grabbed Anson by his collar and jerked him close. With his frustration over his father’s call so close, Harry took the outlet Anson offered and brought his forehead down against Anson’s. 

Anson staggered back, dazed and stunned. Varso caught him before he went down against the corner of the table. Harry wasn’t done, lifting his fists, he turned towards John and was ready to launch them without heed, but Khathe stepped between them. She shoved Harry back into the chair and got between Harry and the others. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" John snapped. "Don't forget who owns this place."

Khathe bared her teeth, all sharp, pointy and stabby. "Your father, Mason."

John blanched white as a sheet. “Fuck, this isn’t what’s agreed."

Harry realised what Khathe had just given him was a vital piece of information — John's real name. Even within that tense couple seconds of silence, he could feel the weight of old arguments occupying all available space there. Before he could process it, Khathe pointed at him. "Do you intend to kill him? Cause I have a working shotgun in this place."

Harry flinched and tried to get out of the chair only to feel the full weight of Khathe's muscular arm slammed down on his shoulder. She glared at him, and Harry held himself still. Despite it all, he trusted her more than the rest of them. 

"No, I mean," Varso blurted. His eyes darted between all of them trying to figure out how the situation just spun out of their control. 

"If you don't intend to kill him for fucking revenge, then let the kid go. He's fucking seventeen. He's fucking underaged."

"But—" Anson roused himself as he shook his head. 

"This is the fucking law of the land. You win or lose by how prepared you are. You want revenge, go ahead. But this is all about profits and nothing else. Sell the merchandise and be a fucking professional about this," Khathe spat. 

Without another word, she yanked Harry to his feet by the collar of the hoodie, which was rapidly getting stretched out by the minute, and dragged him to the door before anyone could speak. She shoved him out. 

"Get the fuck lost," she snarled and slammed the door behind him. There was the solid thunk of a deadbolt slamming home. 

Harry didn't question his luck or why Khathe helped him. Instead he ran back to Brillantmont, clutching the slip of paper she gave him as she shoved him out of Utsaah. 

* * *

Two days. That was how long Harry laid low, put his nose down to the grindstone and attended his classes. Even Harris stared at him when he entered her classroom that very next day like she was surprised. He pressed his lips thin and settled into his chair. Within the first 30 minutes, he was bored out of his mind. 

He fiddled with the slip of paper Khathe handed him. The contents were already etched in his mind but still he pressed it flat on the desk and read it. 

> Deca Quarter
> 
> Gudang Row
> 
> 29 September 2162, 00:00 hour

If Harry had to take a stab at it, this was when and where the sale was going to go down. He folded it shut again and stuffed it into his pocket. 

Harry had no obligation to act on this information. He didn't have to do anything, not at all, but he kept the paper. The information swirled around his head like his brain had clogged up. Round and around it went, just lurking behind the corner. When his mind wandered, it pounced. 

The paper was nothing but a scrap torn off the corner of some notebook. It was mundane and insignificant, but it burnt a hole in his pocket. He could feel the weight of it. The date loomed near, barely 48 hours away. 

What the fuck was he supposed to do with it? He was one man — one boy — as Khathe had made so clear. What the fuck could he do other than to...

As soon as the last buzzer of the day went off, Harry was out the door. Everyone gave him a wide berth as he strode down the hall, students and teachers alike. Harry didn’t understand why, but that was because he couldn’t see the cold grim look that had taken a hold of his face. He was a man with a mission, he knew what Khathe wanted him to do. And Harry was a person who paid his debts. 

* * *

Harry swallowed thickly. His fingers fiddled with the empty cup on the table, pushing it between his hands. The cup made a scraping sound as it slid across the surface. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound. Sitting alone in the interview room, he started having second thoughts, but he was sitting in the heart of Tamayo Point Station Security Headquarters. The time for second thoughts was long over. He was committed. 

Rubbing his hands across his arm, shivering a little. Why the fuck was the room this cold? And what the fuck was taking them so fucking long? Harry wasn’t naive enough to think he could walk in and blurt out some random information and leave, but he was expecting a little more hustle than all this waiting. Sighing, he tapped his omni-tool and it flashed a message. “No connection detected”. Of course, this was a secured place. Harry couldn’t even find some kind of entertainment on his omni-tool as he waited. 

Just as Harry was about to just give up and go bang on the door, it hissed open and a human and asari pair entered. He couldn’t help but straighten up, and he hated himself for having that reaction. Neither were the one that had ushered him into this room and completely forgotten about him judging by how long it took for anyone to come. 

The human, an older woman, looked like a walking cliché. Harry couldn’t help but stared at her getup. A white dress shirt went with a pair of black pants, held up by suspenders and a long black coat. To complete the entire look she even wore a black fedora and had an e-cig clamped between her lips. As she moved to sit down the coat got tangled up with the chair, and she fumbled with it noisily. Her partner, the asari, sighed. The sound felt heavy, long suffering and exasperated. The asari slapped the fedora from her partner’s head and said, “Robbins, You look stupid.”

Robbins, the human, looked affronted but without true anger. She shrugged out of the long coat and draped it over the back of the chair and finally was able to sit. “I do not, B’Masa. You just lack taste.”

“If this is what taste looks like, I’m glad to have none of it.” B’Masa turned to him and cocked a brow ridge in his direction. “What do you think?”

Harry blinked. This wasn’t what he had expected. He had expected turian officers dressed in heavy armour, ready to pound whatever information he was willing to give out of him. He expected being cuffed to the table and not allowed out to relieve himself. He expected to be charged for illegal fighting and all sorts of things. He definitely did not expect this bickering old couple of a pair, _but_ he had to agree with B’Masa. 

“Don’t scare the kid,” Robbins said as she grabbed her partner by her arm and yanked her down to sit. She turned to him and cleared her throat. “Now I hear you have some information for us?”

Harry nodded. He handed the slip of paper over and explained what it meant. They listened, taking down notes. The explanation sounded contrived and fake even to his ears as he omitted his part of the events. 

Robbins leaned back against her chair and glanced at her partner. "Do you believe him?"

B'Masa shrugged. "He sounds no more trustworthy than the other street kids we pick up."

Harry held himself still, he had no idea what she meant. For all the illegal activities he had been involved in, he had little to no experience with station security. Anything he had done was mostly smoothed over by virtue of his name or his status as a Brillantmont student. 

"Meaning not at all," B'Masa filled in the blanks when he didn't react the way she expected him to. 

"But—"

Robbins slammed her fist on the table, and Harry flinched, lifting his fists up in response. "Sorry, I always wanted to try it."

B'Masa sighed and covered her face with her hand. Robbins cleared her throat and leaned forward. Her flinty eyes bored into his, they were so sharp that Harry wondered if they would cut him. "Tell me everything."

Harry swallowed and nodded. They went through several refills of his cup and hours of non-stop questions. In the end, B'Masa stretched, her spine popped with alarming loudness.

"You're done well to come to us," she said. "But let me ask you one more time, are you holding anything back?"

Harry stiffened. He had kept John — whatever the fuck his name was — out of it. Mason, the name rang loud inside his head. To reveal it felt like a breach of... something. But what if they needed this information too? Wasn't it enough to keep those weapon mods off the streets? Wasn't it enough to prevent a little bloodshed?

"Am I going to get into trouble for all of this?" he countered. 

The pair exchanged a glance again. Harry began to realise the way Robbins acted was nothing but a ploy. B'Masa's reactions were genuine, but it also served as a foil for Robbins' antics. This was a con, one that lulled their target — Harry in this case — into a false sense of security. It made him let his guard down, and he had given up everything he had decided not to when he first came.

B'Masa tapped Robbins' elbow and stood smoothly to leave the room. The lingering gaze Robbins gave B'Masa as she left the room, the sway of B'Masa's hips, all of this spoke of something more. This was a pair of colleagues who were in sync in more ways than one. There was a tangible bond that went beyond being colleagues who were familiar with each other, being friends who actually enjoyed spending time with each other. Hell, they could even be lovers. 

Love was overrated. Look at his parents, the answer was right in his face. There was no way one could form a relationship that resembled what was portrayed in the vids. That was for the naive and the blind. But this... He figured he could get behind this. A partnership that spoke of respect and trust, a closeness went beyond the physical distance between two warm bodies. This was something very special. 

Harry leaned forward. "I'll tell you on the condition I don't get into trouble for any of this and I want that in writing."

* * *

Harry sat tight. The date came and went without fanfare. Since his last encounter with the Vipers, he had not strayed near Kilo ward — not to Utasaah or Rakuen, not to any of the other haunts he used to frequent. 

The night the sale was supposed to happen, Harry made sure to stay in. He spent the entire day jumpy and anxious, and it only got progressively worse by the time midnight came around. Tension, unseen but felt, sizzled in the air as he waited — for what he couldn’t say — but for something to happen. A buzzing on his omni-tool, a knock on his door, John rushing in for his revenge or Robbins and her partner coming to arrest him after all. 

As much as B’Masa told him that he would be granted immunity for his information — especially the bit about the name Khathe let slip — he couldn’t count on that promise. For all his desire to be freed of his father’s leash, to be truly and completely independent, his first true foray into the world ended up in flames and ashes. What a fucking mess. 

Sitting on his bed, he pulled his shirt up and examined the stitches he had picked up from that disaster. It had healed. Puckered angry red skin faded to his regular skin tone. His own botched stitching made the scar stand out a little more than the other scars. A shaking finger brushed against the line of raised skin. He hated the sight of this more than the others. It felt like a mark of his failure, and he couldn’t stomach it. With a growl, he yanked his shirt down and forced himself to look away. 

In the end, he didn’t sleep a wink that night. Nothing happened, nobody came for him. In some ways, he felt forgotten, left out and like a piece of trash cast out. 

Life resumed to something resembling normalcy for Harry in the days and weeks following. Girls in school had taken a liking to him more than ever. He couldn’t say why, perhaps it was the scars, but girls didn’t have the same pull for him like before. He didn’t feel the need to get every single girl into his bed like he did before. Sure, the occasional roll in the hay was nice, but it didn’t fill him. Instead he spent a lot of time thinking about his future. 

His exams neared. Once that was completed, Harry was left with his final year in Brillantmont. And then… He had no clue what he’d do. His father had the map of his life all planned out. Everything from his birth to his death, and all the nitty-gritty details in between. If his father could plan out his every single fucking day, he probably would have. It wasn’t the first time he wished he could just call his mother and talk to her. She’d know what he should do. These days thinking about her brought a vague ache centred around his tattoo of her name, nothing more. He sighed. Even that was fading. 

Of course this period of relative peace and quiet had to be broken right in the middle of his exams. 

* * *

"Bulldog!"

Harry's head snapped up. Nobody called him by that nickname here. He was Slade and nothing else. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on their ends, and he turned slowly towards the sound of the voice. 

"Bulldog!" The voice echoed across the courtyard. 

Conversations stilled and then rose in a buzzing murmur as the students tried to figure out who was the target. Harry swallowed thickly. 

_Why is he here? Why isn't he arrested?_

"Bulldog! Come the fuck out. Are you a fucking coward now?" The raw anger shook in his voice as the commotion approached. Students yelped and protested as they got shoved out of the way. "They arrested everyone. And I mean every-fucking-one. The rest weren't granted bail, but Daddy pulled a couple of strings for me. I promised the others to make sure I fucking get you. I knew it was you, you have to be the one behind it."

The pit at the bottom of Harry's gut stretched wide and threatened to swallow him whole. His two worlds were about to collide in a terrible way. Then, an anger flared, taking him by surprise. He wasn't ever a coward to hide away. He didn't fight and thrive in the Ring by being afraid. The Bulldog's reputation wasn't just smoke and mirrors. 

"You've ruined everything! Rakuen is coming down, the Ring is going away, the Vipers are finished! All. Because. Of. You!"

Harry surged to his feet. Instantly, his eyes met John's. Rage coloured John's eyes an odd tinge of red. John smiled, his lips peeled back to reveal his teeth. The way he walked, stiff and pained, it felt as if there were bruises and contusions just hidden under his clothes. 

"There you are." John sighed in relief. His smile widened in a way that went beyond natural. He stepped forward, shouldering through the crowd gathering around them. 

Harry glanced at his fellow students. The mutterings turned into excited whistles and catcalls. Some clustered around certain students. Eyes, keen and sharp, evaluating him and John. Harry recognised the signs. The betting had started. Maija, his salalarian classmate, also his regular bookie, signalled him. "The usual?"

Harry nodded. He might as well get something out of this. She beamed, and her fingers danced across her omni-tool. It didn't take long for the others to swarm her with their bets. 

John snorted at the crowd and ignored them. His gaze snapped to Harry, his focus complete and utter. Harry drew himself up to his full height, feeling unnerved at that unshakeable hatred directed at him. 

"Come on," John said, pulling his sleeves up to his elbows. 

Now that John was close enough, Harry could see the reddish tinge was nothing more than blood shot eyes. John's pupils were blown wide, his nose runny. He couldn't stand still, shuffling and circling around Harry. John was high. There was no doubt about it. 

There wasn't time to figure it out because John charged, screaming, "Now you can fucking pay."

Harry dodged out of the way. The crowd jeered. He ignored them instead he tugged his neatly tucked in shirt out of his pants and unbuttoned slowly. There was another exam later. He had no wish to mess his clothes up. John took swing as he just finished unbuttoning his shirt. Harry grabbed his wrist and felt... something. John's skin buzzed uncomfortably against his. Like electricity, like static, it jumped, it vibrated, and it bit. He shoved John away. John cackled, clearly unhinged in a way he had never seen before. 

"Fight," the crowd chanted. "Fight, fight, fight!"

With a bit more space to work with, Harry pulled his shirt off. Bare skin revealed, the crowd gasped. Right... Nobody had seen his tattoos before, unless they had been to Rakuen, unless he bedded them. His mother's name across his heart, the Bulldog growling on his inner bicep, the quote under his collarbone, the scars he had collected, the stitches he had done himself spoke of a life all of them didn't know about. 

Harry handed his folded shirt to the nearest person who happened to be a girl. She literally batted her eyelashes at him and pressed her face into his shirt. "Come to A Hall, Room 14 tonight." he said, unable to help himself even though he wanted to yank his shirt from her grip. 

"Of course, Slade," the reply came instantly as she sighed breathily. 

Harry turned back to John and lifted his fists. The sun shone down on them. There wasn't a Ring, there was no high stakes betting, but there was still the fight, the crowd and the rush of victory. His body trained and honed for the Ring, his skills sharpened and forged in the heat of battle, Harry stood before his fellow students, no longer one of them, but a fighter, a warrior. 

"Let's go!"

* * *

It should have been easy. Harry was the experienced fighter. John wasn't in the slightest bit adept at this. His motions weren’t any cleaner, he didn’t hit that hard, but Harry found himself on the back foot. His ribs ached, his arms sore and his thighs burnt with fatigue. There was a new speed to John’s movement. As his fists cut through the air, a buzz trailed along with it, an energy that Harry instinctively knew to avoid. 

And then John flared blue. Harry backed the fuck away and stared. John wasn’t a biotic, he knew that. Brillantmont accepted no biotics so John couldn’t possibly be one, unless he lied about that. Realisation hit Harry like a sledgehammer to the chest. “You took Red Sand.”

“Bingo,” John laughed and lunged. 

Harry back pedalled. A loose piece of gravel nearly foiling his balance and twisting his ankle for his efforts. Blue filled his vision for a second before Harry grunted and scrambled to regain his balance. There was an odd pull towards John, more accurately his fist. 

The crowd groaned. “Hurry the fuck up.”

As Harry panted and tried to recover, he had the same thought. This couldn’t go on. Checking his omni-tool, he realised he didn’t have much time left. He had a fucking exam to get his ass to. John grinned as if tasting blood in the water. His lips pulled back to reveal the bloody teeth Harry had given him. John cleared his throat and spat. Slimy and wet, saliva landed on Harry’s white shoes. 

Something snapped inside of Harry. “Come on, let’s end this shit.” No more chances, no more second guesses. He would take the initiative to finish this. Teeth gritted. He started bobbing and weaving.

John snarled and swung, his shoulders telegraphing his move a mile away. It didn’t matter how fast John got if Harry knew where he’d be. If John didn’t know how to keep his elbows in and defend himself, Harry would eventually ground him down. Steeling himself, Harry darted in. So close, he could feel the heat radiating from John’s body, hotter than natural. Something wasn’t right, but Harry put it out of his mind. He slammed a fist against John’s side. John staggered, winded. Harry pressed his advantage, pounding down with his other fist.

For all that speed, John wasn’t used to taking hits. He went down on the ground, coughing and groaning. Harry moved to straddle him, to force him to yield, but John screamed. It was a sound born of anger, rage and frustration, guttural and raw. Blue snapped out in a ring around him. Harry felt it slam into his chest. A solid weight that seemed to break on impact. He braced, expecting to be thrown, but as bright and showy the energy was, it lacked power of a true biotic. The crowd gasped, impressed by the light show. Harry snorted. If only they had watched two asaris go head to head in an all out battle, this paled in comparison. He couldn’t help but pity his classmates being dazzled by this piss weak attempt at the real thing. 

With all this commotion, a teacher was bound to come and check things out sooner rather than later. Harry straightened. “Give up,” he said, hoping John would just back the fuck off now that he knew Red Sand and shitty biotics didn’t make a person a fighter. 

John forced himself to stand, one hand pressed against his side. He snarled, and Harry’s heart sank. To expect rationality from a man who came seeking revenge while out on bail was a futile gesture. John put his head down and charged like a bull. He rammed into Harry’s, shoulder against gut. Not only was air punched out of Harry’s lungs, John’s momentum took them both into the circle of students. They screamed and hastily got out of the way. All the while John hammered his fists into Harry’s gut. 

Harry twisted, and they fell. There was no finesse, there was no grace, just animalistic brutality. Harry returned blow for blow. An elbow against John’s back, his legs kicking out to dislodge the weight wrapped around him. John snarled and bit down on Harry’s arm, drawing blood. His hands turned into claws to scratch and gouge.

And then—

John coughed. His mouth opened and closed like a fish on land, his hands scratched at his own throat. The blue flames that radiated from his skin spluttered like a candle in the wind. The buzzing was so strong even the spectators felt it. 

Harry pushed John off of himself and flipped him over onto his back. Excitement had gone out of the crowd. A hushed silence filled the space, broken only by John’s desperate high pitched gasps. Not once in the entire fight had Harry felt scared like he did now. John’s lips turned blue. Strength leaked out of him at a rapid rate as he lay on the dirt twitching. 

“Call a teacher,” Harry said. 

Nobody moved. Nobody reacted. They just stood and stared like fucking idiots. 

“Get help!” he shouted. “Now! He’s dying!”

Just as the words left his lips, John fell still. The absence of motion was so jarring that Harry questioned if what he saw was real. Panic crept in like poison, without a noise, without a trace. It seized Harry’s heart and squeezed. Cold sweat burst out across his brow. Someone he couldn’t see ran towards the building, hopefully to get some fucking help. 

Harry fell to his knees and pressed his fingers against John’s neck. Nothing, nothing but clammy cooling skin. Fuck, this was real. “John, wake up. Didn’t you want revenge, come on hit me.”

Nothing, nothing, nothing. 

Gritting his teeth, Harry tilted John’s head back and listened. 

More silence, more stillness, more nothingness. 

Harry had never done this before. He had no training other than what he had learnt himself while researching, but he couldn’t just let someone die in front of him. It didn’t matter if John hated him or if they had fought or if John wanted him dead, he couldn’t stand back and do nothing. This wasn’t him. 

Lacing his hands together, Harry found the centre of John’s chest. He locked his elbows and pushed. John’s ribs bowed, his gut expanded. Harry pushed again and again and again. All other distractions culled and cut away. There was only John, himself and his task. With his own heart jackhammering against his ribs, Harry worked without pause. Time ceased to have any meaning, until—

Someone yanked at his shoulder, and he looked up. The school’s medical staff were rushing over while — he craned his neck to look — Harris was pulling him away. Her mouth opened, she was speaking but it sounded far away, muted and muffled. Her hand tightened around his shoulder, her nails bit into his skin. And just like that reality snapped back into place. Noise and colour came rushing back in. 

* * *

Harry didn’t take his exam that day or the day after. He was treated and questioned. By the end of it, he stumbled out having no idea what happened to John. Did he die? Or did he survive? What about the others? Were they all still in detention? What of Khathe? She saved his life, she made this possible. Did she get to walk away from it all? 

Harry was left with nothing but questions. No doubt the case would wind its way through the court system, taking months and years if what little he had learnt from the news vid was true. Harry didn’t want to know more than he gleaned from the news. He was done with Rakuen and the Ring, and it was going to stay that way. 

The two exams he failed to take might have been cause for him to repeat a year in Brillantmont, but his father called and pulled a couple of strings, allowing Harry to retake the exams he had missed. He aced those as usual with minimal effort, but did his father care? Of course not, who was Harry kidding? Right before he was to retake his exams, his father called. Dread pooled in his guts as Harry listened. 

“I want you to put your nose down to the grindstone. I do not want another single complaint from your school. Nothing about your attendance, nothing about your examinations score, nothing about even you jaywalking across the street. If I do get another word from Brillantmont, I’m pulling you out and sending you straight a military prep school. You can sweat and toll with the rest of the grunts.”

What his father probably hadn’t realised was what those words woke in Harry. It reminded him the little info-stick Herald over at the recruitment office had handed him. He looked it over once and put it away. 

While Harry was disappointed with how things ended, not a credit more to his name, earning nothing but scars and the blade of Damocles hanging over his neck in the form of his father’s threats, he didn’t regret a single thing. His fellow students looked at him with new eyes, even Harris did. But Harry hadn’t changed _that_ much. He still fucked away, skipped lessons and drank biyara. What was new was his new fixation on the human body in more ways than one. 

Before Harry realised it, he was well on his way to graduation. 

* * *

Buzzing filled the air. Harry closed his eyes and enjoyed the rush of endorphins through his body. The odd mix of pain and pleasure in a heady combination that made him float above it all. Alvia’s hand shifted from its original position at the apex of his thigh to his inner thigh. Her claws made indentations into his skin. 

“Stop squirming.”

Harry grimaced and forced himself to spread his legs wider. It was an awfully awkward position to be in. Lying on his back, his pants stripped off, his legs spread wide while Alvia worked to finish the tattoo that had been a year in the making. Mandibles pressed flat against her face, she said, “Look, I know you’re feeling really weird. My talons so close to your family jewels and one slip there goes your little kids, but I _am_ being careful.”

“You know that’s not helping,” Harry pointed out, half sitting up, elbow braced against the tattoo bed to look at the progress. 

Curled around his right upper thigh was a snake, gleaming a rich green and black. Its body coiling its way up his leg onto that spot just above his hip, with its head settling over the scar he got from the disaster that ended his fighting career. The snake was completed, inked into his skin for the past six months. What Alvia was finishing up was the phoenix twisting in the opposite direction around the same thigh, locked in an eternal battle of life and death with the snake. Its orange and red flames feathers flared out. Sharp talons clawing at the snake while its beak poised to take the snake's eyes out. 

“I know,” Alvia chuckled. “Now lay back down and let me finish this.” 

Harry sighed. The tattoo gun started up again, going up and down his skin, putting colour into his flesh, cleansing his body of the fucked up scar. He closed his eyes. For a while, nothing existed but him, the buzzing and the tingling sensation across his leg. 

“So what happens when I’m done?” Alvia asked. Her tone was oddly hushed, almost serious. 

It jarred Harry out of his almost zen like state. “I pay you?”

She sighed, dual flanged voice buzzing in sync to her tattoo gun. “You know that’s not what I mean. This tattoo is a big project, and I’ve been bugging you to finish it for ages. Why today, why now?”

Harry didn’t speak. He realised he didn’t have friends, not like others did. He had acquaintances, he had classmates, he had flings, he had warm bodies to slide against, he had… well sex, but not friends in the traditional sense. Alvia was the closest he had to a friend. The only tie he had kept since walking away from Rakuen. 

“It’s my birthday today.”

Alvia’s motions stopped. She lifted her hand from his thigh and wiped it clean of blood. “Happy birthday. I remember humans celebrate their day of their birth. And you guys exchange gifts?”

“We do.”

“Well, you can have a discount later.”

Harry snorted and opened his eyes, rolling his head to look at her. “I didn’t say this to get a discount, you know.”

“I know. I want to give it, can’t I?” Alvia shifted her weight and resumed her work. 

“And…”

“And?”

“I’m going to enlist.”

The buzzing went on without a pause, but Alvia’s silence felt heavy, almost forbidding. Harry figured she didn’t have anything to say about it hence the silence. Just as he was about to close his eyes again, Alvia asked, “The Alliance?”

“Yes.”

“What about Brillantmont? You’re not done right?”

“Almost done, I’d just have to pack my shit together and ship it…” Harry didn’t think the word home fit the place he had in mind anymore. It had stopped being his home for a good long time. What that word represented in his house was now a murky dark spot. Maybe he’d find a place like that for himself someday, For now, home was a word that held no meaning to him. He cleared his throat. “…back. I’ll get a piece of paper from the recruitment office to give Brillantmont so that they’d stop bugging me to go for those career counselling shit.”

“Win-win then.”

“Just so.”

The rest of the session went by in silence after all. Harry watched when the position allowed for it. There was an artistry in watching professionals doing what they were good at. Zero hesitation, just clean and even strokes, one motion flowing into the next. It looked like a dance that told a story of hours, days, weeks, months and years of training and practise. 

“There,” Alvia said as she wrapped the cling film around his leg. “I won’t give you the talk again. This isn’t your first one. Now go put on your pants.”

Harry left Alvia’s place for what was likely the last time. His leg throbbing slightly like a phoenix burning his skin. The sensation felt right for what he was about to do. In a few hours, he was going to change his life and shrug off the chains of his father. He was under no illusion that he was taking on new chains in place of another. But these were his to put on, these were his choice and not forced upon him. 

When Harry put his signature on the datapad, signing at least four years of service away to the Alliance. He realised he didn’t feel scared. He had been scared before, he had felt panicked. This wasn’t it. This lightness in his chest, this weight that shifted off his shoulders, the noose disappearing from around his neck. There was a name for this feeling. He groped for it. 

“That’s all,” Herald said as she locked the datapad and transferred the data into the Alliance’s secured network. “Here’s the packet of information on what you’d need to bring with you when you report for boot. If you have personal transport, you can present yourself at Camp Georgetown. For the exact date and time, check your handbook. If you don’t have transport, present yourself here one week prior to your intake day, and we’ll sort you out.”

Harry nodded. It sounded simple enough. There was time enough between now and the date he was expected back on Earth for a little side trip he had been planning to take for the longest time. 

“That’s it, Recruit Patel-Carlyle.” Herald stood and offered him a hand. 

He grimaced and shook his head. “Just Carlyle.”

She blinked. “Are you telling me I'd have to fix your paperwork when I've just submitted it?”

Harry smiled, a small one. “I’m going to get it legally changed online soon. I understand it will be automatically updated on your systems, I've checked.”

“Recruit, be sure you get it updated. Just go to any recruitment centre with your packet. They'd know what to do.”

He nodded and shook her hand. “Shouldn't I be saluting you or something?”

She snorted. “Let's save it till you're actually completed boot camp.”

Harry hefted his bag into his shoulder and left the recruitment centre. Then he found the word he was searching before, the word that described this new nebulous feeling he had — relief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!


	6. Nexus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryder yawned, long and wide, she tired of his ramblings. Sure, she was interested _at first_ , so she endured and listened. In fact, she’d pat herself on the back for not walking off within the first thirty sentences or so. On and on he went, a story filled with so much grievance and perceived slights. All Ryder heard were complaints. Blah-blah-blah, Bulldog shouldn’t have joined another team — a more successful one she might add in her head — blah-blah-blah Bulldog shouldn’t have allowed the Vipers to attack them. 
> 
> Blah. Blah. Blah.
> 
> Patience was never one of Ryder’s strong suits, and today it had been taxed to its limits. She sighed. The longer the man talked, the closer he edged towards her. By this time, he was leaning so hard in her direction, it wouldn’t take much to tip him over. Ryder cleared her throat roughly, but still the man blathered on. 
> 
> “Carlyle hasn’t change at all, he—”
> 
> Planting a hand against the man’s chest, Ryder shoved. “And what the fuck is the whole point of this?”
> 
> “That Carlyle should be fired and jailed,” the man huffed as he waved his little placard in her direction. “You’re the Pathfinder, do something!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning for smut in this chapter**
> 
> Also read AinZaphir's side story that provides more context on Harry's mother's death. >>>
> 
> [The headmaster and the diplomat ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29331303)
> 
> OC belongs to the multi-talented Seo Kanori / MellowCorn. 
> 
> Check out her [Tumblr](https://seokanori.tumblr.com/), [website](https://www.seokanori.com), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/seokanori/)
> 
> My thanks to AinZaphir for taking on beta duties! Check out her writing at her [AO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir) and [Tumblr](https://ainzaphir.tumblr.com/). 

Ryder yawned, long and wide, she tired of his ramblings. Sure, she was interested _at first_ , so she endured and listened. In fact, she’d pat herself on the back for not walking off within the first thirty sentences or so. On and on he went, a story filled with so much grievance and perceived slights. All Ryder heard were complaints. Blah-blah-blah, Bulldog shouldn’t have joined another team — a more successful one she might add in her head — blah-blah-blah Bulldog shouldn’t have allowed the Vipers to attack them. 

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Patience was never one of Ryder’s strong suits, and today it had been taxed to its limits. She sighed. The longer the man talked, the closer he edged towards her. By this time, he was leaning so hard in her direction, it wouldn’t take much to tip him over. Ryder cleared her throat roughly, but still the man blathered on. 

“Carlyle hasn’t change at all, he—”

Planting a hand against the man’s chest, Ryder shoved. “And what the fuck is the whole point of this?”

“That Carlyle should be fired and jailed,” the man huffed as he waved his little placard in her direction. “You’re the Pathfinder, do something!”

Ryder hadn’t wanted to _be_ a Pathfinder. She kept at the job because that was who she was, she might not start things but she’d sure as hell finish them. And now, never was she more happy to correct a person’s misconception about who exactly was the human pathfinder. “I am—”

“Ryder!” The voice broke through her focus. Both of them spun towards the voice. Carlyle strode down the steps towards her and the man, heedless of the tiny little protest being held in his honour. 

“You!” The man cried and lunged towards Carlyle. 

Carlyle flinched backwards, and Ryder grabbed the man by his collar and held him back. The action was so quick it nearly choked him. “What are you doing? You’re the Pathfinder, you’re supposed to help the people,” he spluttered as he struggled. 

Ryder wrapped an arm around his neck and caught him in a choke hold — nothing too tight, just enough to keep him where she wanted him. Her eyes darted over to Carlyle to make sure he was okay. Carlyle looked surprised. She couldn’t see him tolerating a person blurting his life story to the world like this — if it was even true in the first place. If what she had just heard were lies, she’d strangle the man. What a waste of her time. 

“Bulldog, the chickens have come home to roost,” the man said. It would have sounded a lot more threatening if he didn’t wheezed the words. 

“Carlyle,” she called out. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

Carlyle’s eyes narrowed, he studied and stared. The gears clicked into motion as he tried to place the man. But Ryder was hungry, she wanted food, and she wanted it two hours ago. “Fuck it,” she growled. “I’m going to just choke him out and call Nex-Sec. They’ll handle it. Fuck, they should have handled the stupid dinky shit protest anyway.”

She started tightening her grip around the man’s throat, tucking one arm under the man’s chin, the other against the back of his neck. Panicked, he clawed at her arm. Wincing as his nails shredding her skin, she held on. Just thirty seconds, that was all she needed. The other protestors looked fearfully on. Two of them had even dropped their placards and ran. 

“Ryder, wait,” Carlyle called. 

“What?” Ryder grunted. His struggles were weakening. Once he was out, she’d just put him into a stasis while she got Kandros on the line. “Can’t it wait? I’m a little fucking busy.”

“No, let him go. I know him.”

Ryder stared at Carlyle, trying to judge how serious he was. Who was she kidding? Carlyle didn’t know the meaning of jokes. She let go but kept a grip on the man’s collar. What kind of soldier would she be if she let him punch Carlyle in his stupid face? Then, there’d be a trip down to Nex-Sec, no dinner, and she’d be pissed off. That wouldn’t do at-fucking-all. 

She stared at Carlyle. For once, his emotions danced naked across his face. Surprise, suspicion, recognition and finally realisation. It was quite a show to behold for a man who kept his emotions under lock and key at the best of times. 

“Seng?” 

Ryder’s ears pricked up. That was a name the man mentioned many times in the story. She grabbed Seng by the shoulders and spun him around to face her. “You’re coming after Carlyle after how the fuck long? He was a kid, you were a kid, and you’re _still_ holding a fucking grudge?”

Seng struggled, enlarging his collar by his pulling and yanking, but Ryder kept a tight grip. “Yes, why not? He ruined my life. I sat and rotted in jail for so long, and it’s all his fault!”

Anger flared. Her grip on her temper had been loose at the best of times. As much as Janaki tried to help her with it, she still flew off the handle easily. “Grow the fuck up!” 

Without waiting for Carlyle to speak another word, she started dragging Seng towards the trams. She wouldn’t be able to grab all of the protestors, at least not without knocking all of them out and fucking up the Nexus. Kesh would have her head if she did that. She could get Seng down to Nex-Sec HQ. That would have to be enough. 

“Ryder, stop. Just stop,” Carlyle called as he kept pace with her. 

If this had been just six months ago, she’d have ignored him, but it wasn’t and so she stopped. Seng screamed for someone to help him. Ryder couldn’t help but feel antsy. Her eyes scanned the perimeter, and she itched for her pistol. Danger could be lurking anywhere. She stiffened. Was that a flash of a blade she saw? No, it couldn’t be. The bitch is dead. Dead and gone, like Scott—

“Ryder, come on. Just let him go,” Carlyle said. 

He reached out and touched her shoulder. That contact — warm, solid and here — jarred her out of it. Ryder met his eyes. His gaze wasn’t quite soft, but understanding, unlike the pity she had seen in so many others. Inch by inch, she forced her fingers to relax. Seng stared at them, more bewildered by the turn of events than anything else. He scrambled away as quickly as he could. 

“I should have known the Pathfinder was in league with Carlyle,” Seng shouted. “Bulldog, watch your fucking back. Someone will get you.”

Ryder surged forward, ready to kick the living daylights out of him as Seng yelped and forced his way through the crowd. She reached for her core, ready to just pluck him — and maybe a couple of innocent by-standers, but they’d be fine, just a little startled — and keep him in stasis while they get fucking Nex-Sec down to clean up this mess. 

Carlyle tightened his grip on her shoulder. And the moment was lost. Ryder thwarted whirled around to face him with a snarl on her face. “What the fuck?”

“It’s fine.” He wrapped an arm around her waist and wrist and steered her in the opposite direction. 

“He threatened you,” she gritted out. Her legs obeyed Carlyle’s nudges and tugging, but she still craned her neck trying to catch sight of the fucker. 

“Are you worried about me?” Amusement danced across his words lightly. That might as well be a full on guffaw for the amount of emotions Carlyle typically showed. 

“No, you can take him any day, but nobody gets to threaten my people and get away with it.”

Carlyle stopped, and Ryder was forced to stop as well. He let go of her waist but not her arm as he stared into her face, searching for something. 

“What?” Ryder’s annoyance snapped back into focus. “Something I said? Me believing you can take him? That’s nothing. I’ve seen you Carlyle, you’re not the fucking goody two shoes asshole others might think you are. You have seen some shit.”

Carlyle blinked. “How much did he tell you?”

“Utsaah, Bulldog, Rakuen, The Ring, Vipers and every bitch you’ve banged along the way.”

Carlyle snorted. “Everything then.”

Ryder shrugged. “If he can be trusted not to embellish the story.”

Then, her stomach growled. Carlyle’s gaze dropped to her gut before flicking back to her face. “Hangry then. Is that it? You were hungry, and you got pissed.”

Ryder blinked and considered his question. They continued walking again. She realised they were headed towards the skycar queue which was mercifully empty. “Maybe,” she replied when they got into one. 

“Well, I have just the thing for you.”

She cocked her head and looked at Carlyle, then at the console where he entered their destination. 

> Omni ward, Kwijlen Dining. 

Her brow rose as she secured her seat belt and settled in for the ride there. “Interesting,” was all she said as Carlyle’s mouth lifted a little in as much of a smile he could manage. 

* * *

Of course how could things go as planned? It never worked out, not when Ryder was actually looking forward to trying some krogan asari fusion cuisine, complete with live butchering experience and cooking over a real fire. The damn restaurant is Triple Trophikos crowned to boot. Well it said so on the little menu in her hand, whatever that meant. She had even begun to think that maybe it wasn’t all bad allowing corporations and businesses to open up more shops and the like on the Nexus. 

Until, Carlyle got a call from Kesh. 

Ryder waited as Carlyle cocked his head to listen to the other end of the conversation. She drummed her fingers against the table, already decided she wanted wild adhi steak. She might even pay more if she got to hunt it down herself. With her blood up, she needed an outlet anyway. On that thought, she checked her credit account and realised she hadn’t transferred more into this particular account. She sighed. Maybe Carlyle would lend her some credits. 

“—be there now,” Carlyle said and ended the call. 

That made Ryder sit up. What did he mean _now_? She was hungry and she wanted to eat _now_. Judging by the colour on Carlyle’s face, it wasn’t good news. Folding the menu shut, she folded her arms. “So am I in trouble?”

Carlyle shook his head. “No, Kesh is calling me in…” Ryder’s heart did a little flip. Maybe she’d get to eat after all. That was until Carlyle completed his sentence. “…Tann’s orders.”

“I’m coming.”

He stiffened as if surprised. 

“What?” she challenged. “I’m coming.” Standing, she dropped the napkin into the chair and strode out, leaving Carlyle to follow in her wake. “Let’s get this fucking over so I can fucking eat.”

* * *

“Kesh,” Ryder greeted before deigning to turn her gaze upon Tann. “Director.”

Kesh’s grin was difficult to hide even when she stood next to Tann. To say Ryder was in a bad mood when she entered Tann’s office was putting it mildly, but seeing Tann’s eyes widening upon seeing her was a kind of payment for suffering his presence. The blood draining from his face was just the cherry on top. 

Tann drew himself up and was about to speak when Ryder’s attention drifted to the stranger in the room. Her eyes narrowed. Seated across Tann’s desk was a man dressed impeccably in a three piece suit. His back ramrod straight, shoulders square, and his hair was silver with age. He rotated around to lay his gaze upon her, flicking those grey eyes up and down her as like judging the cost of a mediocre livestock. Though lines were etched into his skin, age didn’t dull his eyes one bit. She found a calculating sort of intelligence glinting in them. The kind that reminded her of people — Tann and Addison — who reduced lives to numbers on a spreadsheet, who looked for a scapegoat rather than risked letting the people know the truth. She didn’t like what she saw. 

Carlyle caught up with her and drew up to her side. Ryder felt more than she saw his surprise turned shock and then finally settling on suppressed displeasure. And he was never, _never_ one to shift so quickly to anger. That was her job. His was to remain rational and shit. The static of his simmering anger was so strong she could feel it sparking across her skin as he put himself between her and the stranger. She blinked. The gesture was terribly protective, but she realised this wasn't about her. This was a confrontation that stretched years and years before she came into the picture. 

“So good of you to join us here—” Tann started, thinking Andromeda spun around his ass, as usual. 

Carlyle ignored him and took a step forward, his jaw clamped so tight, Ryder was amazed he managed to speak. “Father.”

Ryder blinked. Now this wasn’t how she’d expect to meet Teo’s grandfather. Not that the label meant a thing to her judging by Carlyle’s reaction. 

“Son,” the man unfurled himself from his seat. “I see you’re still making trouble in whatever galaxy you go to.”

Carlyle stiffened. If he went anymore rigid, Ryder thought his spine would snap. She folded her arms across her chest and waited, content to let Carlyle take the lead in this. If heads needed to be punched in, it still wasn’t too late to get it done. 

“Not even a letter, Harry?” the man said. 

Carlyle lifted his chin, but he said nothing. He turned his gaze to Tann. “Why am I here?”

Tann cleared his throat pointedly, shooting the man a look to the back of his head — how fucking effective. Ryder did her best not to roll her eyes, or they might never return. “Right, Dr. Carlyle,” Tann said in an attempt to bring the attention back to himself. “The protests are becoming a problem. Mr. Patel here has a proposal to make them go away. I’d suggest you listen to it before making any judgements. The research into Brain Fever—”

"Khaltark," Ryder interrupted. 

"What?" Tann frowned. 

"It's called Khaltark," she explained, taking the time to show her disdain. 

"I know, but—"

"Then call it by its proper name." She smiled, not at all meaning it. "Khaltark," she repeated, deliberately enunciating every single syllable slowly. 

Hmm, she never figured the word delightfully would ever factor in her life, but now it had because Tann's face had darkened _delightfully_. Maybe there was some truth in the whole confronting her past thing that Janaki, her krogan therapist — Ryder used the word extremely loosely — suggested. 

Tann cleared his throat. He dragged his gaze away Ryder with a clear effort while Kesh coughed surreptitiously into her hand. It sounded a lot like a bark of laughter. 

"As I was saying," Tann started again, "before I was so rudely interrupted." 

Ryder smiled so sweetly in response she almost made herself gagged. 

"Khal..." Tann struggled to say the guttural tones of the krogan language. 

"Khaltark," Carlyle interrupted, his patience utterly and completely frayed, glaring at Ryder as if daring her to speak. She shrugged and leaned against a low cabinet nearby. "What about it?"

"Listen to what Mr. Patel has to say—"

"I think I can speak for myself," Patel interrupted. "May I?"

Tann swallowed his retort with visible effort, instead he grunted. Patel stood and stepped forward, standing just an arm's length from his son. Here, Ryder could see the similarities between the two men. Clearly, Carlyle took his colouration from his father. Within a couple of decades, Ryder figured Carlyle's hair would have gone completely silver, and he'd have crow feet lining the corners of his eyes just like Patel. On the surface, they clearly looked like father and son. But that was just it. The similarities were only skin deep. Patel's grey eyes were cold like ice, looking upon them like they weren't people just assets. Their value only hinged on how it benefited him. Carlyle's hazel ones were keen, sharp and more importantly professional, constantly observing and evaluating people, as befitting his job as a doctor. 

"Harry you couldn't come see your old man before you enlisted?" Patel asked. “And changing your surname, what brought that on? I had to find all that out through a lawyer?”

Harry drew himself up to his full height. “I would have talked to you if you didn’t get your assistant to turn everyone away. But that was decades ago what has it got to do with what’s happening now?”

“You’ve ignored my calls—”

“I was in boot camp.”

“You didn’t reply to any of my—”

“I was in med school. It keeps a person busy.”

Patel’s nostrils flared. All his calm and poise was nothing but a facade. Carlyle, on the other hand, grew ever harder, stiffer and colder. His replies flung back, volley after volley right into his father’s face. 

“You.” The word came out louder than all Patel’s previous sentences. He cleared his throat and tried again. Anger merely simmering under the surface. “You threw away the future I’ve laid out for you. You made me look bad when everyone asked me why my son, my heir, dropped my surname from his name.”

Carlyle lifted his chin and made his father’s eyes. The tension was so thick Ryder could cut it with her omni-blade if she wanted. Tann shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Kesh moved to stand by Ryder’s side. The cabinet creaked dangerously as she rested her weight against it. 

“My mother died and it took you a month” — the words forced its way through Carlyle’s clenched teeth in a low growl — “a whole month to let me know. You didn’t let me see her one last time, and you had her cremated.”

“That was—”

“What about before? All the lies, all the women you slept with. Did you even respect your wife? You killed her.”

The accusation lingered in the air. Carlyle didn’t offer evidence, but Ryder didn’t need any. She knew Carlyle. Trust stood between them, a bridge of solid steel, built on experiences that went beyond the norm. It surprised her to realise the faith she had in Carlyle almost rivalled her belief in Sc— Ryder dragged her thoughts back from the brink. This wasn’t the time, this wasn’t the place. Carlyle needed her to fucking focus. Nails biting into her palms, the pain sharpened her hold on the present. She shifted her stance. No longer was she leaning against the cabinet, instead she stood with her feet planted, hands hung loose by her side. Ryder’s hand twitched. She wished she had a weapon. That was one thing she hated about not being a Pathfinder anymore. She couldn’t walk around armed. Maybe she could convince Kandros to give her special dispensation to have a pistol if nothing else. But if it came down to it, being a biotic, she was never truly unarmed as much as she preferred having a weapon. 

She kept her gaze on Carlyle, waiting for a sign, a look, a signal that she could arrest — more like beat up actually — the fucker now. With an accusation like the one Carlyle had levelled on him, Ryder expected Patel to get angry. Instead he smiled. But what a smile it was, all curved and sharp, like a dagger showing its teeth — dangerous. 

“I did not kill your mother,” Patel replied, his voice quiet, deathly so. 

Carlyle stepped forward, closing the distance between them. Ryder couldn’t help but move as well. Only Carlyle’s outstretched palm held her back. Their eyes met for one brief moment, and she staggered by what she saw in them — anger, hurt and layers upon layers of grief, but underneath it all was a solid steel foundation of stubbornness. That was something Ryder recognised all too well, she had seen it in the mirror many times before. Still, she refused to let Carlyle do this alone. Opening a private channel to SAM — something she had rarely done before the Incident and since — she said, “Find out what you can about the protests and Patel.”

SAM’s reply came instantly. “Of course, Ryder.” It was jarring to hear SAM’s voice after months of silence, but right now she’d take it. They needed intel to beat this asshole. 

Patel stood a full five inches shorter than his son, but he didn’t look bothered having Carlyle looming over him. “Your mother killed herself. She ingested poison and died. Her death was being investigated and _that’s_ why it took a month to tell you about it. I didn’t want it to affect your studies. She was cremated quickly because of that one month delay.”

“I know,” Carlyle replied. “I’ve read the report more times than you could have imagined. It might not have been your hand forcing those pills down her throat, but it had been you handing her the bottle in the first place. You drove her to her death, and you don’t even have the decency to admit it.”

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” Patel said as if he was speaking to a dimwitted child. “C-Sec ruled it a suicide. Accept that your mother was a flawed human, a successful and well loved diplomat no doubt, but a weak minded woman filled with feminine hysterics. Besides, it has been _decades_. Get over it.”

Ryder’s vision went red as she moved to grab Patel by his collar. With a quick twist, she slammed the man against Tann’s table. Tann yelped as if he had been the one she had in her hands. Jaw clenched, she was sorely tempted to just punch him, but she pulled back enough to glance at Carlyle. 

Typically, he would have stopped her immediately, but today he remained where he stood, fury wrapped around him like a cloak. That was permission enough for Ryder. She lifted Patel up and sat him on the table. "I don't care who the fuck you are, everything that has come out of your mouth thus far has nothing to do the protests."

Patel looked over her shoulder at Carlyle. "Who is this? Can you get your guard dog to unhand me?"

Ryder inhaled sharply. Her fists would do the job here. She didn't need a weapon for the likes of him. And the best thing, she wasn't the Pathfinder anymore. For the first time, nothing held her fist back. She smiled. Getting fired was the best thing that had ever happened to her. 

Carlyle didn't speak. Kesh stood impassively just observing. Tann was surprisingly silent as well. Perhaps he realised he had stuck his nose into something deeply personal. Hindsight — always twenty-twenty. 

Patel paled when he realised this. He twisted and attempted to shove Ryder off. Sure, he might be taller, but he was neither particularly fit nor a trained soldier. He lacked the leverage to do anything. "Relax Patel and watch what the guard dog can do," she said, her smile broadening as she caught his hand in hers. Her grip sure, she applied just a tiny little pressure and slowly twisted. 

He cried out. "Who are you? I'll make sure you'd be exiled from the Nexus for this."

Ryder laughed. She glanced at Tann who didn't have the guts to meet her eyes. 

"Ryder," SAM spoke. 

She grunted. 

"I have the information."

"Go ahead," she said via their private channel. Her attention split between keeping Patel where he was and listening to SAM. The more she listened, the harder she twisted his hand. By the time SAM was done, Ryder wasn't just furious, she was incensed. "What the fuck have you done?" 

Letting go of Patel's hand, she held him by the lapels of his blazer and slammed him onto Tann's table, scattering stationary, datapads and whatever knick knacks there were. Tann shuffled to the safest the corner of the room, conveniently right beside Kesh. "You paid them," Ryder roared, rocking Patel against the table, punctuating each word with a solid thump. "You fucking paid them."

"What are you talking about?" Patel cried. "Is nobody going to stop this mad woman?"

Carlyle finally moved, slow and heavy like his feet were made of cement blocks. His hand gripped Ryder's shoulder and squeezed. She stilled and turned to meet his eyes. 

"He is not worth it," he said softly. 

Such a simple sentence, spoken so quietly, yet it held a power almost nobody else had — the power to stop her. Ryder took a deep breath and let it out. She forced her hand to let go. Patel slumped onto the desk, holding his hands up to ward her off. This was enough. SAM had given her what she needed to rid Carlyle of his father, rid them of the stain of his presence. 

Stepping away, she turned her back on Patel. Her eyes met Carlyle, and he nodded at her. Patel’s scornful voice had to interrupt this moment. “Harry, keep your bitch leashed. You clearly do not know how to handle women.”

That was when Carlyle surged past Ryder and put a palm against his father’s chest. The touch was deceptively gentle for all the anger it held. “Like how you handled my mother?” he asked. “No thank you. Have a care who you’re speaking to. She is the” — Ryder stiffened, half expecting Carlyle to invoke their son’s name. They hadn’t registered his birth with the Nexus, they hadn’t even discussed what the fuck they were going to do about it. She wasn’t ready to let other people outside of her oddly shaped family know about t. Most definitely not Tann of all fucking people. 

“—reason you’re not fucking exalted. She is the Pathfinder that bled for you, defeating the Archon. And you didn’t deserve it.”

An odd feeling took hold in Ryder’s chest. Hearing the acknowledgement from Carlyle meant something she didn’t know she needed. Standing a little straighter, she placed her hand on Carlyle’s shoulder and pulled him back. Directing her gaze at Tann, who had half hidden himself behind Kesh, she said, “Patel is the one who hired the protesters, did you know that?”

Tann stiffened. The information lured him from his hiding place, that and Kesh had inched away from him, looking at Tann like a piece of mud on her armour — unwanted and unwelcome but ultimately harmless. 

“What evidence do you have of what? Is it enough to fling accusations without proof here in Andromeda?” Patel snapped, slapping Carlyle’s hand away. 

“Please refrain from speaking, Mr. Patel. You’re digging a bigger hole than you realised,” Tann said. He glanced at Ryder. “The Pathfinder, former-Pathfinder, doesn’t lie. Not even when it’s in her interest to do so.”

Ryder’s brows crept into her hairline. Now that had to be the surprise of the year. She didn’t reply, instead she transferred the data over to Tann’s omni-tool. His lips pressed flat as he scanned through it. He glared at Patel. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Patel pressed forward, forcing Carlyle to step back. He sighed and placed a hand over his heart. “I am an old man. An old man that came all the way to Andromeda just to make things right with my son. Yes, I’ve paid those low lives to stage a protest. Fault for me for that, but remember all I want is to get my son into the same room as me so that we could speak—”

“You fucker,” Ryder growled. She hadn’t punched him earlier, and she was already regretting it. 

“Fault me for being a man with an ungrateful son,” he said, keeping his eyes pinned on Ryder, knowing how much it goaded her. 

Carlyle stepped between them, blocking her view of Patel. He glanced at Tann. “You have what you need to make the protesters go away?”

Tann nodded. “Already handed over to Kandros.”

“I’m not needed here?”

“No.”

“Good,” Ryder interrupted. She glared at Patel who smirked as if he had won. That wasn’t going to stand. Reaching into her core, she flared blue for one brief moment. Teeth bared, she warned, “Do not let me find out that you’re up to some stupid shit again because I can and will snap you like a fucking twig.”

Without allowing Patel time to react, she glanced at Kesh and Tann. She nodded once at each of them and grabbed Carlyle by his arm and left. 

* * *

Well, instead of returning to the restaurant, they returned to Carlyle’s assigned quarters. He took one look at her things and went straight into his office. Normally Ryder would think he was overreacting at the _so called_ mess, but not today. As a concession, she shoved her things to the side. At least it wouldn’t trip anyone up. 

Ryder’s stomach growled, and she grimaced. It was late, and she was starving. Staring at the closed door to Carlyle’s office, she wondered if he was too. She stepped into the kitchen and checked his fridge to see what she could put together. Delivery was an option but patience — as anyone knew — wasn’t one of her virtues. 

In thirty minutes, she had two plates of steaming hot… Making a face, she looked at the packaging again. It said these were supposed to be fried dory fish with pasta. Judging by the items on the plate and the picture on the packaging, they were reasonable — she used the term loose, very loosely — facsimile of each other. She decided the cooking had been a success. 

Ryder sent Carlyle a message telling him that there was dinner if he wanted it, knowing he’d still be sulking in his room. Not that he didn’t have a good reason to sit and think, but she couldn’t help feel that if he spent more time acting rather than holding himself back, he’d sulk less in general. 

Five minutes later, her share had gone the way all her meals went — gone. Ten minutes later, she got bored waiting, she took a shower. Fifteen minutes later, there still wasn't a reply from him though it indicated that he had opened the message. Pissed off, she ate his share as well. Twenty minutes later, she even washed all the plates and shit up. Thirty minutes later, she got worried. And she found herself standing outside his office. 

Ryder stood there like a scolded child, unable to enter, unwilling to leave. Taking a deep breath, she pressed her palm against the door, and it chimed on the inside. Silence. Right... She stared at the holo-lock, green, unlocked. Shrugging, she entered. 

And blinked at the sight that greeted her. 

Carlyle stood bare chested, looking at himself in the mirror. His closed fist held over his heart where she knew a name lay underneath. The tattoos carved into his skin were ones she had never thought to ask about. She figured if they held meaning, they were his to keep. But now, they had seen each other through life and death, they had a fucking kid together. _That_ had to count for something, right? And she wasn't a cold-hearted bitch, she cared too. 

"Hey," she said softly. The greeting parted the air between them, disturbing the silence. 

For a while, Carlyle didn't speak, he didn't move. She wondered if he realised she was there. Then, he grunted. "Hey," he rasped tiredly. "I don't need any dinner. You can—"

"Already eaten yours."

He looked up, and their eyes met through the mirror. Ryder stepped forward and pressed her palms against his shoulder blades and tried to smooth the tension out of them. Back and forth, her hands went, running them over his bare skin, over the tattoos, over a body she came to know as well as her own. She didn't speak. She wasn't made for talk, she was made for action — fast, violent and intense. Sara Ryder wasn't built any other way, and Carlyle knew that. 

Carlyle moved the closed fist from his chest. In his grip was a key. He held it out to her, and she took it. The key, warmed by his grip, was old in its design, patinated with age. "What is this for?"

"Something my mother left for me," Carlyle replied. 

So something precious and important. Ryder held it in her hand. She brushed a finger over his heart, tracing the name — Elizabeth — etched into his skin. "This?"

"My mother."

She hummed. Her finger shifted direction and ran down his arm, finding the bulldog snapping its jaw under her finger. "This?"

"My nickname when I used to run with the wrong crowd."

"Are you sure you're running with the right one now?"

Carlyle lifted his eyes. Amusement danced in them. "Current crowd is... mostly right. Just not all the time."

Ryder snorted and stepped around him. Her hand danced across his skin towards the baboon between his shoulder blades. Its mouth spread wide, teeth bared in a howl she could almost hear. Whoever did it, did good work. She didn't need to ask her question, and Carlyle understood. 

"After I earned my medical doctor license."

Ryder hummed and rounded back to his front. She sank down to her knees, taking his pants down with her in a single smooth motion. She was, after all, well practised. Hands ran over his inner thigh, climbing and descending that expanse of dark skin, following all the twists and turns of the snake and the phoenix. Carlyle shifted, not away from her ministrations, but towards. She smiled, but she kept her face averted as her hands made pass after pass across his inner thigh, brushing his bulge _accidentally_.

He grunted. Even through his underwear — white, boring, boring white, no doubt Initiative issued to boot — Ryder could tell he was hardening. Leaning in, her mouth just an inch away from his crotch, she whispered, “So what’s this about?” 

Carlyle seemed to have lost his ability to think, let alone speak, because he let out a strangled growl. His hands reached for her hair. Carding fingers through her blonde strands, fingernails scratching a path over her scalp, his mind clearly no longer occupied by his father. Ryder chuckled. Her breath danced across his bare skin, and the kneading motion across her head stilled for a while. 

“Come on Carlyle,” she breathed. “Can’t you multitask?”

“Ryder,” he growled, low, husky and hard. Her smile only widened at the sound of it. 

“Come on,” she coaxed, taking her tongue across his thigh, reaching closer and closer towards his groin but never quite making it there. “Snake, phoenix. What do they signify?”

“Me and my father, an eternal fight to the death,” he managed to grit out before he devolved into groans. 

Ryder snorted. “Dramatic.” 

Her tongue swiped across his bulge once, twice and thrice. Carlyle’s hands fell on her shoulders, and he pushed his crotch towards her mouth. “Ryder.” Her name fell from his lips. “Ryder.” A plea, a command and everything in between. “Ryder. I—”

This was a dance as old as their relationship. They knew the steps well. Carlyle looked at her, and she him. Their eyes met, and that was enough. He yanked her to her feet by her hair. She winced, but the old thrill ignited a fire in between her legs. Her smile couldn’t get any wider. One hand tugged at her shirt impatiently, while the other grabbed her breast roughly. One fouling the work of the other. Carlyle the doctor took a backseat, and Carlyle the man who fathered their son, who pulled her back from the brink, who knew her right down to her marrow came forth. 

He leaned forward and captured her lips, tongue flicking out to taste her dinner — well, his too if he had bothered to reply — teeth raking down her neck. Ryder’s shirt gave up the ghost, and it ripped under Carlyle’s little tug of war between his hands. She hadn’t bothered to put on her undergarments after her shower, and it was just as well. Stopping from his ministrations, he bent and picked her up. That put his face right at chest height. He indulged himself. Pressing his face between her breasts, he carried her out of the door — she had to duck her head lest she get a concussion from hitting the door frame — and into his bedroom. Without so much as a word of warning, he tossed her onto the bed. 

Hands found the hem of her pants as she bounced against the mattress. With a single pull, she was as naked as the day she was born. Carlyle smiled, the kind he never used outside of the bedroom. His eyes keen and sharp as his gaze raked across her body, admiring his handiwork. “Hurry up,” Ryder whispered breathily. 

Carlyle needed no invitation. Palms splayed across her chest, he kneaded one tit as he licked a trail down towards her crotch. She arched upwards to meet him but a pinch of her nipple told her exactly what he thought of that idea. Gasping, she rocked against him again. His fingers twisted her other nipple. “Patience,” he growled. 

“I don’t have any.”

He laughed. The sound set her belly on fire. “I know.”

One hand reached into her hair while the other found her vagina. One set of fingers tangled between her locks, pulling and twisting, while the other teased and circled her clit. Ryder shuddered. She was already wet and ready, what the fuck was taking him so long? She reached downwards, heedless of the grip Carlyle had on her hair, for his underwear. Her deftness succeeded in tugging his underwear down, freeing his penis from its prison. 

  
Carlyle refused to be thwarted and brought a palm down on her bum with a resounding smack. Ryder yelped, more surprised than hurt. “Patience,” he snapped. 

She glared at him, and he laughed. Even as irritation flared in the pit of her gut, she felt lighter for having heard it coming from him. His penis already hard and throbbing slipped into her vagina. As he filled herself — stretching muscles and skin — and withdrew — leaving her empty and needy, the room filled with the slap, slap, slap of skin on skin, choked full of their half uttered grunts and groans, gasps and pants. Reducing them down to animals, allowing them, more importantly him, to take the tension he held, for years, for decades, and release it in one explosive act. 

Ryder smiled. As she held both his metaphorical heart in the form of a key in her hand, and his shaft within her body, she tilted her head back and accepted the pounding he gave her. Every single one drilling deeper and deeper like he wanted to split her in two. Her turn would come later but for now, this was good. Carlyle needed it. 

With seed spilling out, he fell on top of Ryder. Sweaty skin upon skin, he pressed his lips against her throat. Her pulse thumped hard against his lips. All of a sudden, he stiffened, not in a good way. “Is your bio-inhibitor working?”

Ryder rolled her eyes. “You're asking this now? What if I say it is not?”

“I can ask SAM.”

“No,” she snapped, irritation flaring immediately. “We've talked about it. You don’t just go behind my back and—”

Carlyle chuckled, a low rumbling sound that shook his chest and ran low down to his still flat abs. “You're still the same.”

Ryder met his eyes, hers flashing with annoyance, his glinting with amusement. There were words that hung between them in that one brief moment. Words like “thank you”, like “I just wanted to be fucked, like “don't flatter yourself”, like “thank you anyway”. But not a single word passed between their lips. A look was enough because when one held the life of the other in their hands, they gained something no one else could — a sort of telepathy, a kind of understanding, a type of insight. 

Carlyle's stomach growled, shattering the moment. Ryder frowned. "That teaches you to skip meals. I think I saw some ready made meals in your fridge."

He smiled, eyes narrowing in that sinister devious way. "My meal is here."

Before Ryder could question him, he closed his hand over her throat and kneaded, cutting off her air and giving it to her, over and over. His tongue trailed across her chest, his teeth cut across her skin in a path of fire. As his hands shifted lower, his mouth did the same thing until his hands rested upon her hips and his mouth between her legs. She arched her back, trying to grind into his face, but his fingers bit into her skin, holding her exactly where he wanted her. He suckled upon her bud like a man dying of thirst, like she was the fountain of youth. 

Ryder gasped as his tongue drove her to madness. Just as she stood on the edge, he withdrew. She wanted to grab him by his hair to keep him there. Then, he returned with one finger, no two, fuck three. She panted, making sounds only he could draw from her. Pumping his fingers in and out, he all but shoved her over the edge and plunged her into the depths of ecstasy. Her core tightened and clenched, and she was lost to the euphoria. 

When Ryder returned to herself, she found Carlyle looking at her. His gaze was unfathomable in that moment. He sat up and walked straight to the bathroom. She lay there in a haze, just floating. Her eyes fluttered open when she sensed a presence nearby. It was Carlyle, now cleaned up and dressed in a pair of sleep pants. Key in hand, she offered it back to him. Instead of taking it from her, he pulled her to her feet. Tossing a robe at her, he led them back into his office wordlessly. 

There in the almost sterile office, datapads in neat stacks, stationary in their designated spots, the chair pushed in just so — Ryder could get hives just from the sight of all that tidiness — a table dominated the space. In the middle of it was a little chest she didn't notice earlier. Ornate metal work curved around the edges, cradling it. Dark wood polished and worn by what looked like generations of hands. 

Carlyle picked the chest up and thrusted it at her. Ryder's eyebrows rose into her hairline. "Go on," he urged. 

Ryder put the key to lock. With a twist, the catch released its hold. Gingerly, she lifted the lid. Inside a letter, a proper one, real paper and all, lay sealed in a tiny stasis capsule. She glanced at Carlyle who nodded his assent, and she lifted it out. Its importance was stamped across it. So with a care she typically reserved only for disarming a bomb, she twisted the capsule open. Air hissed and flooded the interior. She fished the envelope out using two fingers. Only when she got it out that she realised though the envelope had yellowed with age, it remained completely crease free. Her eyes flicked up to meet Carlyle’s. He nodded again. 

Ryder studied the envelope intensely, turning it from the front to the back to the front again. “Harry” was written in cursive across the front in large looping letters. The H had additional flourish like the writer had taken extra time and effort to get it right, but by the Y the long swooping tail had lost its steadiness. Taking a deep breath, she eased the envelope open. Paper hissed against paper as the letter slipped free. She unfolded it and read.

There were only three short lines, but they held so much. 

> Harry, 
> 
> I’m sorry. Remember I’ll always love you. 
> 
> Love, Mother. 

Ryder didn’t know how she was supposed to feel. Sorry for Carlyle? Maybe so. Heartache that he had held onto this letter for so long? Perhaps. Anger at Patel for his denials? Definitely. But at the back of her mind, Ryder’s thoughts turned to her own mother. She lost — if it could really be called that — Ellen when she was about Carlyle’s age too. She didn’t have a letter like he did. She wasn’t loved as he so clearly was. She shed no tears over her mother’s death like he must have had. 

But… Scott…

Ryder would have wished to have a letter from him. Some kind of reminder for the man he used to be, the brother he had been for her. Some tangible form to hold onto and remember. She might not be one for sentiment but in this, she understood the feeling too well. 

Ryder carefully folded the letter, returned it to its envelope with as much care as Carlyle had taken with it for all these years. She resealed the capsule and returned it to its place inside the chest and locked it again. With the key in hand, she crossed the space to his side and pressed it into his hand. Lacing her fingers with his, she led him out to the kitchen, keeping a tight grip on his hand. Braced against the kitchen counter, she watched him gather ingredients for his meal. He took one look at her and doubled everything. Ryder chuckled. He pressed his lips against her forehead as he passed by, much to her consternation, before starting to cook for two. 

For once, Ryder didn’t frown, she didn’t shove him away. She just stood there and watched, content and at peace. Outwardly, they might look like a typical family. Man, woman, child how much more normal could they get? But in reality, they were as unconventional as people came. Ryder might not have what Carlyle had, a mother to love and hold her, but what she did have now was pretty good too. And maybe, just maybe, Carlyle felt the same way too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on my [Tumblr](https://natsora.tumblr.com/). Kudos and comments are always welcome!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The headmaster and the diplomat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29331303) by [AinZaphir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AinZaphir/pseuds/AinZaphir)




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